


ACHIEVE: Origins

by Whitaker C Sour (slowmobanana)



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: AH Marvel AU, Action/Adventure, Blood, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Minor Character Death, drowning tw, superhero au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:22:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22294750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slowmobanana/pseuds/Whitaker%20C%20Sour
Summary: ACHIEVE: The world's only hope against powerful supervillains and otherworldly threats. They were pioneers of the superhero movement, the first team to make their name public to those in need. This is the story of how the Earth's greatest defenders came to be.*~&&&~*The government tampers with unworldly effects, all begat by the arrival of an alien weapon. The Immersion Science Facility opens their experimentations to the public, and an underground business sets its eyes on the most powerful inventions.When a robbery attempt goes awry, science vlogger Gavin Free discovers he may have inherited unusual powers from a science project. Michael takes up a strange sword to get his revenge on those who tried to kill him. Ryan fights for his sanity after being betrayed by his most trusted friend. Jeremy agrees to test out Matt's new inventions on the field while saving lives in the process. Jack becomes tired of spending his life running from those who want to take his unique power. Geoff arrives on Earth to bring them all together.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 52





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I started a Marvel AU for the Achievement Hunters and I really liked it and now I wanna write a fiction on it. If I'm honest, I really wanted to do this in a different format but such is life.

_Gavin Free, the Night of the Cataclysm_

Distant ringing, echoing, spinning, pulling him from the blackness of sleep.

Sleep? No.

Dust fell onto his face like rain, catching in his nose as he breathed deeply once, coughed, strained to open his eyes. The light of the sky hurt and his eyes watered to flush the debris from his lashes.

He ached.

The ringing persisted, but something deep thudded basses into his chest, his heart slamming once, twice, thrice times as fast as memories resurface.

 _He should not be sleeping_.

Gavin shot up, clawing at his face with vinyl gloves until he could see again. He turned, got to his feet, crouched at first then slowly stood. Looking up, his gaze rose to the blackest part of the sky. A thousand-foot giant, lumpy and wrongly made. Composed of things that bulged and bloated as the monster moved, giving the impression of a walking tornado. All the things --- the legs of furniture, the jagged bricks, the rotten food, the shards of glass --- broken, unused, unwanted.

The villain threw back his head and howled into the sky.

Something much smaller zipped around its head, ducking behind skyscrapers. Bolts of black lightning rained from above and struck upon its head every time he snapped his fingers.

“Mad King!” A purple-orange streak whipped by, the wind rushing against Gavin to catch up to the cowboy driver. In one hand raised above his head, a mine. “On my count!” he screamed.

The dot in the sky, a crowned man, turned to watch the motorcyclist weaving his way to the foot of the beast and throw the mine onto its leg. Ryan floated backward, ducking to avoid a desk that monster hurled at him.

It flew at Gavin instead. He didn’t flinch, but threw a hand forward and inhaled, exhaled. The desk slowed, slowed, slowed, but didn’t stop. Now, though, it was no threat. It hung in the air much like it shouldn’t, so Gavin lowered his hand and frowned at the piece. At a time, it was beautiful --- but it was well used and scratched and dented and one of the legs wobbled as it crawled through the air.

Beside him, Michael groaned. Gavin glanced downwards and gasped, kneeling to his side. “Michael Boi!” Next to him, the sword radiated light, responding to the waking state of its owner. Gavin scanned his surroundings, saw no one, but still yelled, “Jack! Jack, help!"

“King, now!”

The ground shook, ripped apart buildings, tore itself to shreds. A crack snapped open across the road and screamed. Gavin fell forward, leaning over Michael as the dust and debris from above came clambering down over them. The pieces got bigger, but Gavin didn’t even see how Jack’s faded yellow protective bubble shielded them from a falling satellite dish that wouldn’t have killed them but probably hurt.

Gavin looked up; Jack knelt at Michael’s side. Gavin had not a chance to say anything before Jack placed his hands on Michael’s chest and his hands began to glow ever gently in the chaos.

The sword illuminated, Michael’s eyes fluttered open. “Ow. Fuck,” he muttered. “That sucked.”

The monster howled as it collapsed to one knee, swatting at the little sky king who continued to spin in circles and hurl black anti-light at the villain’s face. It almost caught him once. Instead, Ryan halted and commanded:

“Stop.”

The monster stopped.

Jack’s magic stopped,

Jeremy stopped his motorcycle.

Michael stopped short of grasping the hilt of his sword.

Gavin almost stopped breathing.

On the corner of his eye, Geoff walked forward. He opened his arms and smiled. Ryan floated down to his side, fur-edged cape billowing in a nonexistent wind. Gavin remained frozen, not as if he could not control his body but that he could but didn’t want to. An unconscious willingness to follow orders. “Good work, Mad King,” Geoff said. “How long will this last?”

Ryan held up three fingers, then made a zero with his fist. His chest puffed, his breath held tight, and his cheeks were beginning to flush a faint red.

“Garboman, right?” Geoff began, beginning his solemn walk down the road. “That’s what they call you. We don’t know where you came from, or why, but this is going to end here and now. I’m just giving you one chance to surrender. Because I hate killing people, especially people I can save.”

The monster didn’t move.

“The Mad King will unfreeze you. If you try anything, he’ll smite you the fuck down. Remember; surrender... or die.” He sounded too casual on the word die, as if it was not the end of a life but a state of being.

There was a brief moment before he waved his hand. Ryan exhaled puffing for extra air, and Gavin felt his muscles relax. Garboman turned to face them. Jeremy revved his engine and reached into his coat, holding his hand above his ribs at the ready. Jack’s magic flared up again, but only enough that Michael could sigh in relief and then grab his sword. When he stood, Garboman eyed him.

Gavin lifted to a stand, watching the monstrosity consider his options. Ryan pressed his thumb and middle finger together, holding it high so the villain could see.

There was a long silence.

And then it spoke, a voice that rolled like truck tires over gravel; “The sword is mine, and I will have it.”

A collective drop of hope; Geoff sighed.

Michael scoffed, gripped his sword, and raised it to the air. “In your dreams! Mogar is ready!”

A blinding flash of light; where the young man had been before instead stood a six-foot man in a bearskin cowl. He was almost unrecognizable if his face hadn’t remained the same. Geoff sighed and set out a hand. “Mogar, hold on---”

Michael only grinned, tossing a sideways glance at Geoff with Jersey arrogance: Don’t worry, I got this. He lifted the blade above his head, the illumination finally reaching a blinding brightness, then swung down hard. A long, thin line of energy sliced through the air, reached Garboman, and severed what could be the head from the body.

It swayed, side to side to side to side, then crumbled and all the broken pieces collapsed unto the ground. From the fall came a wild tempest that threw them all back.

Gavin hit the ground. Another threat of darkness.

Fading wind.

Fading echoes.

Silence.

Ringing.

He pushed himself from the ground and looked. No monster. No villain.

Mogar leaped to his feet, pumping a fist in the air. He opened his mouth as if to cheer but no sound came out beyond the wheezing of his breath as it came out, in, out, in. Bright light. Michael again. “Fuck yeah! Take that, you piece of literal shit.” A beat as he looked at everyone else who was getting off the ground. “Told you I got it.”

Ryan huffed, tried to stand, then gave up and landed into a sit instead. “So, why didn’t you do that to start?”

“I did,” Michael snapped. “But it only worked ‘cause you guys weakened him." A beat. "I guess.”

“Is that what happened?” Jeremy mused, pushing his motorcycle upright again. “Wow, that whole thing sucked.”

Gavin ignored them, joining Michael in a celebratory pose. “We did it! We saved Achievement City!”

Michael shifted his weight, chuckled, lowering his sword to his side. “Yeah, no thanks to---”

Droplets on his face; Gavin flinched and shook his head to wipe away at the weird cold upon his cheeks. When he looked again, Michael was struggling against living water for his sword. Michael didn’t have to say a word: everyone was already fighting to free him from his wrestle, but the water yanked the sword from his fingers, under the sidewalk, into the sewers.

“Son of a _whore_!” He tried to dive after the sword but instead got stuck in the grate. Jack pulled him out with a great heave. “No!” Michael half-cried, which resembled a pouting child. “My sword...”

“ _My_ sword,” the gravelly voice corrected. Sewer water climbed out of the grates, pulling garbage and food and other stuff out with it. The monster rebuild itself, a swirling tornado of water and trash. The hand formed first, clutching the sword, and then its face --- almost grinning. For the first time, there was a mouth. It opened wide, broken stone like jagged teeth, sewage water drooling from its mouth. “My _sword_.”

It dropped the blade between its teeth and shut its jaw. Michael screamed; “ _No_!”

Blue. Light blue. Blinding blue. From the stomach of the monster came a powerful, burning light. Gavin threw up his hands, Ryan tried to scream a command, snap his fingers, anything. The echoing of panicked yells.

Then, darkness.


	2. Gavin: Vav, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gavin Free is a science vlogger who attends the NH Science Centre's Grand Opening of the Immersion Wing, but it seems he is not the only one interested in their new breakthroughs.

**Part One: The Havermeyer Robbery**

* * *

_Gavin Free, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
The Night of the Robbery_

The birds were squawking and so was Gavin, scrambling to juggle a tripod, a camera, and a coffee as he sprinted down the busy sidewalk. He weaved around people, spilling his coffee, catching himself with lanky legs. “There’s just… so many _bloody_ people.”

In his ear, the earpiece buzzed back his friend’s laughter, a single bark. “Yeah, B, it’s America,” he snarked. “What’d you expect?”

“You know, not sure.” Gavin turned a corner and fumbled for his tripod. Finally, he tucked it under his arm and found his destination a few buildings ahead.

White and gold banners hung under the science centre’s sign; _North Havermeyer Science Centre: Immersion Wing Grand Opening_. Stalls were set up out front the three sets of large double doors, enticing curious passerbyers to explore the new facility. The building was phenomenal, delicate decoration in white marble and holographic ticker tape. He stopped to set his coffee on a newspaper stand, reaching up to his ear. “Listen, I’ll call you later. Just rest up, right?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I’m tryin’,” Dan snorted. “I’m goin' nuts in this place. Hospitals are the worst.”

“Yeah, B, I know. I'll call again later.” Gavin cut the line, snatched the coffee, and hurried down the sidewalk.

Dr. Burns waited beside the first stall Gavin came upon. He was smiling, gesturing to the new building, speaking to a young couple who became curious about all the fuss. “The Immersion Science Convention has had several massive breakthroughs and we intend to display them all here at the NH Science Centre. From quantum physics and time machines to the untapped potential of psych--” His eyes fell to Gavin and he lit up. He turned to the woman at his side and muttered something to her. She nodded, stood, and continued his sentence. Burns made his way over; Gavin straightened and lowered his tripod. “Mr. Free,” he greeted. “A pleasure!”

He stuck out his hand and Gavin leaned the tripod against his hip to shake it. “The pleasure is all mine,” he said. “I’m excited to see what you guys came up with.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something for your channel,” he said. “Come, I’ll show you around.”

He reached into his camera bag and produced two small microphones, one to clip to himself and one that Burns attached to the collar of his coat. Gavin then picked up his tripod and started up the stairs after Burns.

Inside, the science centre seemed bigger, somehow. The ceilings climbed two stories higher than they needed to and people shuffled through the lobby. Children played at the railing of a second floor and a group of university students huddled in front of a funny-looking mascot in a lab coat to take a picture.

He scrambled for his camera, pulling it from the bag, and settling himself together for a picture. He considered the camera’s options, deciding on manual for the time being, and began to film the people and the early exhibits and his walk through the Science Centre. Burns spoke, barely loud enough for Gavin to hear; “The Immersion Science Facility specializes in what we like to call, _Impossible Science_. One of our most prized breakthroughs --- and our most important exhibit --- is the possibility of Time Travel.”

Gavin smiled. “Time Travel. Reckon I’d use that to impress a bird,” he joked and Burns laughed as if he didn’t hear a thing Gavin said.

They approached the Immersion Science wing. Gavin twisted, catching little cinematic shots of the different exhibits. He stopped at one and lifted his gaze from the camera’s viewfinder. _The Psychic Capabilities of the Brain_. The exhibit was a room, completely enclosed with a glass wall to look through. Inside was a complex machine made of pistons and bolts and a single, stormy-looking orb that powered it. On the other end of the machine, a sort of helmet and many wires. “What’s that?”

Burns stopped and straightened his back. “Ah, one of our most successful projects. Here, I’ll have them demonstrate for you.” He disappeared behind a near door, so Gavin stole the moment to catch some interesting angles of the machine.

“Is that it?”

Two men who stood at one end of the machine, eyeing the odd orb with curious eyes, close enough that Gavin could see them on the corner of his eye.

“I guess so,” said one of the men. He leaned his weight into his back leg, gesturing with the hand that held a can of soda. The other hand was shoved into his pocket. “I think that powers the whole thing.”

The other man pushed his face close to the glass, fogging it with his breath. “Bulletproof,” he said. He tilted his head back, and Gavin laughed to himself that there was so much product in his hair, not a strand moved out of place as he examined the ceiling. “All the way up. They really don’t want anyone getting at it.”

“Then they shouldn’t have put it on display. But, you know, it means it can’t be that valuable.” The man turned away, whispered, but Gavin could still hear the mischief in his voice. “That means there’s more.”

“Gavin!” Gavin jumped and choose to make sure he gripped the camera in his hands before even thought to steady his feet. Burns approached him a wide grin, then he gestured to the machine. “I hope you’re ready!”

“Yeah!” he said. He felt like he should be saying more but didn’t. Instead, he unfolded the tripod and mounted the camera to it. By the time he looked up, a golden retriever had the helmet strapped to its head. Its tail whipped back and forth, panting and sitting like a very good boy, watching the handler with interested eyes. Gavin grinned at the sweet puppy face but eyed Burns warily.

"It’s okay,” the scientist said when he noticed Gavin’s gaze. “It’s completely safe. Safety always comes first at Immersion Science. Just watch.”

The man stepped away from the dog and the dog remained sitting, happy and content. The handler placed a treat in a glass box and the dog’s ears perked when it saw it. A brief moment, the dog stopped panting and sniffed the air. A second, two seconds, three seconds, four.

The treat lifted into the air.

Gavin lifted his head from the viewfinder, gaping in shock. It gave him chills; the dog cookie floated over the glass, across the space, and into the dog’s mouth. The retriever chopped away at the treat then looked at its audience and wagged its tail again.

Stunned silence. Purely stunned silence.

“Un- _fucking_ -believable,” whispered one of the men beside him and Gavin agreed.

“Did you get that?” Burns asked and Gavin turned his attention to the screen.

“Yeah. Yeah, I got it.” The handler ran up to the dog and scratched its ears, cooing and praising the dog. Gavin shook his head. “That’s incredible.”

Burns chuckled. “Just wait until you see the Time Travel exhibit.”

***~ &&&~***

The Time Travel exhibit was like the psychic dog; a strange machine behind panels of glass --- but, even though the concept was familiar, the entire set-up was different and not what Gavin expected. Instead of something that someone could go inside, it was set up like a computer and a weird-looking, ungunlike gun. He kept his confusion --- and his disappointment --- to himself and instead focused on catching different segments of the machine in the best light.

“So, what does it do?” he asked, stepping sideways with the camera pointed at the machine.

“So far,” Burns said. “We can speed up or slow down anything hit by the ray. With enough power, we can send objects back or forward in time.”

Gavin furrowed his eyebrows, straightening his back when he decided he was happy with what he filmed. “Not people?”

“No. That’s…” Burns winced when he smiled. “Not advisable.”

“Oh.”

“But,” he continued. “It doesn’t change the fact that this machine can control time. The only thing we can demonstrate so far is how we can manipulate the forward progression of---”

The lights blinked out and Gavin’s heart leaped into his throat. Bleak darkness, and then the back-up lights kicked on and everything was faint in the dimmed light. Gavin looked around but there was nothing new to see. Silence washed over the crowd. The people stilled and strained to hear anything; an explanation, a trouble, a direction, a leader. Nothing came forward and murmurs and whispers rose until the people were talking again. Most attendees remained still but some moved around to continue looking at the exhibits.

“What’s going on?” Gavin asked. He looked at Burns. He clenched his jaw but his eyes were wide, taking a deep breath before turning to Gavin again.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m going to find out. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Burns disappeared into the crowd and Gavin was alone. He pursed his lips and gripped his camera, then decided to press the record button in case anything interesting happened. He held the camera out and turned it towards him, flipping the viewfinder around so he could see how he recorded himself. “Hello, there, I’m Gav and I am at the North Havermeyer Science Centre in Achievement City, Texas, and…” He looked around for a dramatic effect. “It looks like there’s been a bit of a blackout, so I’m gonna kill some time and…”

When his eyes turned back to the viewfinder, his voice trailed off. Behind him, two dark-dressed men ducked into a security door labeled Authorized Personnel Only, looking around to make sure no one followed them and shut it. Gavin turned, catching the door shut with a click.

A moment of hesitation, considering his possibilities before curiousity got the better of him. He turned off the recording, picked up his tripod, and approached the door. He tried the knob and gasped when it opened. He hesitated, then he, too, looked around to make sure no one saw him before he slipped into the door.

Behind the door, the same dim lights guided down a hallway with many labeled doors and at least three turn offs before the hallway ended into a janitorial closet. It was empty, but there was bustling happening somewhere. Gavin strained to listen, picking up muffled voices down the corridor. He crouched down the corridor, sneaking down the hall until he came to a cross-section. He peered down the left and saw the two men as they entered one of the double doors.

Gavin steeled himself, took a deep breath, and then trotted down the hallway after them.

He approached the door. Hesitation, then an idea. He pressed his ear against the door but all he could hear was bassy thudding through the metal slab. An odd sound to hear but he didn’t bother to question it. He produced his camera from its bag and flipped around the viewfinder so he could see what the camera could see when it faced a right angle.

He opened one of the doors and stuck his foot between them, slipping the camera in so he could see what was happening in the room. He pressed record for good measure.

Two men, one with a blacked-out skull mask and the other a man with a handkerchief around his face. Gavin’s blood froze when the man looked up but his hair stayed perfectly in place.

He turned the camera around the room, recognizing the science centre in the finder. He cocked his head to one side, continuing to scan the room until the camera landed on a familiar stormy ball hooked up to a machine.

This was the psychic machine exhibit.

A gloved hand reached for the ball, pulling it free from the machine and holding it up to examine it. “Beautiful,” he awed, rotating it in his fingers.

Gavin stole the moment to peer into the room himself but only had enough time to see the crowd staring at the men in a flight of panic, pointing and yelling. Someone else’s voice boomed, “Stop!” Sirens kicked off. Something was definitely about to happen.

Skull Face and the handkerchief guy turned back to the door and Gavin panicked, yanking his camera back from the door and letting it shut. He didn’t stick around to see if they had found him. He booked it down the corridor, made a right turn, and sprinted back towards the door he came in through.

That door was opening. Gavin slid to a stop, yelped, then yanked open the door to his left, slipping into it and slamming it shut before they saw him. He squeaked again when he noticed the glass wall with people on the other side (people who were more distracted by the two scary men in the psychic exhibit) and he hid behind the time machine.

He gasped for air, staring at the ceiling, praying no one noticed him hiding in the exhibit he definitely wasn’t supposed to be in. He’d bide his time until he was certain he could emerge from that door undetected.

Bang, bang!

Gavin abandoned his camera to protect his head. It clamoured to the ground. Screaming, resounding shouting. He squeezed his eyes shut. Bullets slammed against glass, made craters in the bulletproof shields. His heart slammed with every impact, his ears rang, his chest ached like he’d run a thousand miles. Screams began to fade as people escaped the firefight, replaced by barked orders and more sirens.

The door slammed open. Gavin looked up. Burns stormed across the room to the time machine and slammed buttons upon the computer. The machine whirred to life, vibrating against Gavin’s back, and he leaped to his feet. “What’re you doin’!?”

Burns whipped his gaze to Gavin and his eyes widened. “Free!? What’re you doing here!?”

Again, the door whipped open and Skull Face stood in the door. “He’s tryin'a turn back time!” he yelled. “Stop him!”

Handkerchief Guy slipped in under Skull Face, lifted his gun, and opened fire. Burns hit the deck. Gavin hit the wall behind him. The bullets hit the machine.

The machine screamed.

“What the fuck?” whispered Skull Face.

“Uh, oh,” said Handkerchief Guy. He looked to his partner with wide eyes, then booked it out of the room. “Run!”

Skull Face didn’t hesitate to follow, disappearing around the corner. Burns screamed, “He has the Black Segment!” and sprinted after them. Gavin glanced to the machine, then leaped to his feet, scrambled for the camera, abandoned the tripod.

He ran for the door.

The machine screamed.

Bright, white, burning light.

A force. One that rippled through his muscles, through his blood, through his bones. One that slammed him against the door. One that felt like it should burn but didn’t. One that made his limbs fail. One that made his head spin.

One that made the world go black.

He wouldn't remember hitting the floor.

***~ &&&~***

Gavin woke up, shot up, gasping for air like he had never breathed before.

Ringing silence.

He lifted a hand, rubbing an eyebrow to ease a wild headache at the front of his brain. He swayed but forced himself to stand --- and when he did, he froze. His jaw fell open.

Time stood still. Bullets hanging in the air, officers mid-run, someone halfway through waving their arm in the air. An uneasy peace clung to the air. He spotted his camera, unbroken, on the floor and he picked it up before stumbling out the double doors, out of the exhibit and back into the hall.

Burns, Skull Face, and Handkerchief Guy were missing. Despite himself, Gavin returned to the door he had come through, walked between the frozen people. He approached a bullet frozen in the air and noticed that it was still moving --- very, very, very slowly. His eyes followed the bullet, then he reached out and tapped it with his finger… then pulled away when it burned his finger. “Bugger _me_!” he gasped, shaking out his hand and then wiping it on his shirt like that would help.

The pain, somehow, almost seemed to bring him back to reality. This was happening. It was really, really real. “What the _bloody hell_ is going on?”

He didn’t stay.

He crouched below the bullet, stepped around the officers. There were many officers for two men. He examined their faces, the things they held. He stopped short of a terrified officer. Young. There was fear in his eyes. The kind of fear that comes from knowing that things were worse than they looked. Even if he couldn’t tell the future, Gavin had a feeling this man would run.

He was right there with him.

Gavin burst out of the doors, descended down the stairs, and into the street, and found himself sprinting full tilt as far away from that place as he could.

The farther he ran, the faster everything around him began to move.

For fear, he ran behind a building. His hands trembled, squeezing the camera with all the strength his fingers could muster.

Sounds came back. Honking, chattering. There was unrest here, too.

Relief of time moving again, of being far away from the dangerous threat of bullets and thieves, he lifted the camera to put it away into its bag… and noticed it was still recording. Gavin held his breath, staring down at the viewfinder, blinking a bright red circle. A dark blue message popped up on his camera; _SD Card Storage Space Low_.

Anxiety replaced his fear. Curiousity. A bad kind of excitement.

Gavin stopped the recording, shoved the camera in its bag, turned on his heel, and started back down the alley, started back towards his hotel room.

The sky was getting dark.


	3. Jack: BeardO, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack investigates a strange event happening by the Cove.

_Jack Pattillo, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
The Night of the Robbery_

Around eleven at night, the front doorbell announced the arrival of a visitor and Jack hurried in from the kitchen to greet them. “Welcome!” he chirped, still holding a dish in one hand and a drying cloth in the other. He recognised the customer, someone who had arrived the previous day. “Welcome back to the Hunter’s Home. Can I get you anything?”

The young man looked up from fumbling with a camera bag, eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights. He breathed shallow, licked his lips, glanced around the room. “I, uh, no, thank you,” he said. He rolled over his vowels and sharpened his consonants; an Oxford accent if Jack ever knew one.

The young man’s hands were trembling. Jack lowered his arms, furrowing his eyebrows together. “You… You’re the photographer, aren’t you?”

The man nodded, crossing to the stairs. “Yeah, sure.”

“Are you okay?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Alright. Just let me know if you need anything.”

The young man said nothing, kept his head low, and skipped steps up to the second floor. He disappeared around the corner. He spent a long time fiddling with his key, cursing under his breath, and it took a solid minute before Jack heard the door shut and lock behind him.

Jack sighed, shrugged, and returned to the kitchen.

He set the clean dish on the rack, threw the drying cloth onto the oven handle, then returned to the front of the bed and breakfast. The first floor resembled a living room on one side and a hotel on the other. He had an inward-facing desk a few inches from the wall, which held his laptop and a filing cabinet of printed paper and a drawer of keys.

The other side had a TV mounted to the wall, a coffee table, a couch. The entire room was stuck between “someone’s house” and “hotel front lobby”. A time ago, this may have been a house but someone renovated it into an apartment building, had four floors and forty rooms. Then downtown Achievement City was built around it and it became a business space instead of a living space. It stood abandoned for a long time, then Jack came along.

He stuck a sign to the door window --- _Ring Bell for Assistance_ \--- and flicked off the inside light.

He reached for the plaid red curtains to shut them, then hesitated when a black car pulled over to the side of the road in front of his building. Jack ducked behind the curtain, peering around it. The car did nothing for a long time and the street lights glinted in a way that kept Jack from seeing inside the vehicle.

Sirens chased a speeding vehicle down the street, whipping by with incredible speed. Jack ducked back. Barely a second after the sirens passed, the car did a u-turn on the street and followed them.

His body visibly relaxed.

He shut the curtains.

The TV had a lot to say and Jack couldn’t say he was surprised since there were sirens and searchlights and a million other things happening outside his window.

“A robbery took place at the North Havermeyer Science Centre an hour ago today,” the reporter explained. “Police have issued a curfew in effect at this moment. They warn citizens to return to their homes and remain indoors until the curfew is lifted. Currently, our news chopper is covering the high-speed car chase.”

An awkward beat; the scene changed to the live recording of the chase Jack had witnessed outside. Sure enough, a fleet of police cars chased a black sedan down the highway toward the Cove.

The TV flicked off and silence came again. Jack placed the remote on the coffee table, stretched, and decided it was time for bed.

***~ &&&~***

A single, distant gunshot startled Jack awake. He blinked blearily into the darkness, falling his gaze to the glowing red numbers of his alarm clock; 2:54, in the morning.

He fumbled for his phone, squinting when it illuminated his face. He flicked open the Know News app, for curiousity, and scanned the latest Breaking News article. The curfew wasn’t lifted yet. He rested the phone on his chest and stared at the ceiling.

Lights exploded outside his window. Rainbow colours like northern lights danced over buildings and clouds of black and purple seeped upwards like smoke into the sky. The science centre robbery. What was stolen? Jack gripped the blinds with his hand, biting his lip and he watched the smoke pour into the streets.

“You wanna go, I can tell.”

Jack jumped three feet in the air, pushing to a stand lightning fast. But he saw who it was and, despite himself, relaxed. “What’re _you_ doing here? Why’re you in my room?”

Geoff came from the shadows of his room, rainbow light fading between the blind and landing upon his face. “Well, shit was going down so I went to find the only person I thought could help.” He looked surprised as if to mask his arrogance, then gestured downstairs. “I rang the bell.”

There was a moment of hesitation, then Jack sat back down on his bed again, resting his elbows on his knees. “What do you want, Geoffrey?”

“The same thing you do,” he began, clapping the edge of his fist into an open hand. “To help save people and bring justice and blah, blah, blah.”

“No, you don’t,” Jack countered. “But go on.”

Geoff shrugged. “Okay, so, I got my own shit going on, what a surprise -- but, remember that little deal that I proposed to you and you threw back in my face? Literally?” He held up the dumb superhero mask Jack hated. It was green and white and designed in abstract shapes. It was as dumb as Jack remembered. He glared. “C’mon, you know you wanna.”

“Superheroes are _cool_ ,” Jack began. “But they do _not_ work in practice. It’s good to see them in paper and ink, not as good to see them in real life.” A beat. “You familiar with the Vagabond?”

Geoff scowled, waving his hand dismissively. “Supervillain,” he scoffed. “Way different.” Then, like lightning struck him, he opened his arms. “You could be the anti-him! A symbol of life and peace!”

“No, I _don’t need_ to be a superhero,” he snapped. He set his phone on the bedside table. “I’m going to stay here. I’m going to run my business, and I’ll be _damned_ if anything stops me from doing that. Now, can you get out of my room? How the fuck’d you get in here, anyway?”

Geoff sighed, his shoulders dropping. “I mean, I would, but…” He smirked again. “We both know you’re gonna go out there tonight, aren’t you?” He threw the mask at Jack and Jack caught it in his hands. “The police don’t care about good or evil. It’s just them versus us. Go do the right thing -- and protect yourself while you’re at it.”

Jack lifted the mask. “I’m not a superhero,” he said.

“But you got superpowers,” Geoff smiled. “and you’re a hero. I’d say that’s close enough.”

***~ &&&~***

The night was cold, plunged below freezing despite it being early spring. The full moon stared down upon the city, watching with interest in crater eyes.

Jack felt stupid with the mask, a white robe stained with barbeque sauce, jeans, an old shirt that hadn’t seen the light of day in years. It couldn’t be any farther from a superhero costume but the idea wasn’t to be seen anyway.

As Jack neared the scene, most of the smoke had dissipated. A police chopper whirred overhead. The sirens had subsided and only blue and red flickered off apartment brick walls. All the lights were off, including the street lights. A citywide blackout. It must be.

He cleared a corner and ducked into an alley. It was best to avoid the main streets until he could assess the situation and move on.

“Yeah, we got a Code 47.” Jack crouched and crossed to the other end of the alley, ducking behind a trash can as best he could. A police officer leaned against the driver's side door, holding a radio to his mouth. “There’s a shootout in progress by the Cove.” He was standing pretty casually for someone reporting in a gunfight. The radio muttered something in response and the officer sighed. “Looks like a gang fight. We suspect it’s related to the robbery but we’re still investigating. Please advise.” A beat. “Copy that.”

The guy threw the radio back in the air and continued to lean against his car. More gunshots in the distance. The officer lit a cigarette, opened a game on his phone. Looked like the cops weren’t getting involved.

Jack sneaked out from behind the trash can and hurried down the street towards Fifth. So, it was all kicking off down at the Cove. He turned, hurried across the street, prayed the officer wouldn’t look up long enough to see him.

Three police cars blocked off the Cove on Fifth. A group of officers stood around and watched the lights in the sky. “That’s not normal,” said one of them.

There was a five story parkade by the Cove and Jack hurried down the street, to the left, over the cement half-wall, into the lot. He stayed low, keeping at least a car between him and the officers. The lights helped offer distraction.

The shooting subsided. Jack froze. The lights faded, everything stopped. His blood was cold and he hid in a stairwell that lead to the upper levels of the blockade. Some vision would help.

He climbed the stairs, hurrying to the very top. He scanned the level through the window of the door before venturing into the night. He stood now, crossed to the edge where the Cove was visible. He peered.

A man came out, heaving an unconscious friend behind him. He was hurried, limping. Him and the body he carried had such similar physique, he could probably mistake one for the other in bad light. The man threw his friend in the backseat, got in the driver’s seat, and then wheeled off away from the Cove. The cops would likely get them soon; Jack hoped he wasn’t actually witnessing a kidnapping instead.

Jack pulled away from the edge, scanning one last time for anyone. He found nothing but the black mist that billowed westward...

No, there was someone else, huddled under an abandoned truck. The only reason Jack noticed him was because the mist seemed to gravitate towards him, covered him, almost blended him into the darkness beneath.

Sirens again, chasing the car that had sped away a few moments earlier. Jack ducked a little but it mattered not. The police disappeared around the corner.

Other than the waves that crashed against the rocks, the Cove was silent.

The man down below crawled out from under the truck, slow and pained. He forced himself to stand, arm wrapped around his stomach. He stumbled when he walked, limped, and his grunts echoed across the wareyard.

Jack pushed off the concrete wall and hurried down the steps to the ground floor again.

By the time he made it to the floor, the man was missing but he couldn’t have gotten far with his injury. Jack scanned the Cove, then spotted a trail of blood along the ground that lead into an abandoned warehouse. He followed.

He pushed open the door. It creaked, echoing the sound of rust off the walls. Jack held his breath and strained to listen. Laboured breathing, echoing off metal walls.

The warehouse was wide. Two lines of tables stretched on either side and crates were stacked in the corner. Varied items littered the warehouse, some that seemed to glow and shine in the orange light. There was something blue under the table he'd been standing beside. There were a lot of potted plants that decorated the tables and hung from the ceiling above. It was decorated like a greenhouse but used like a storehouse.

As Jack walked, he finally found the man sitting on the ground, leaned against the wall behind the table. His hand was limp at his side, bloodied. On his stomach, a heavy wound that bled in buckets and pooled below.

Jack frowned.

He pulled the tables out of its line, a resounding screech that echoed. The man stirred but didn’t wake. Jack knelt next to him, examining his face. Smudges of black paint decorated his cheeks, his forehead, his eyelids, melted in the sweat and ran down to his jaw. His eyebrows scrunched together, pain making the most of his features.

Jack rested onto his knees, pulling the black jacket away to witness the wound more clearly. Then, he reached out, pressing his hands against the wound, and his palms lit in a faint yellow light.

For a long moment, he held, taking all the time magic needed to mend a fatality. Again, the man stirred, shaking his head side to side, but he didn’t wake. His breathing eased. The tenseness in his muscles subsided, causing him to sway and tilt. As the man slid sideways, Jack caught him and laid him down on the concrete floor. He reexamined the wound. It would scar, but the bleeding ceased and there would be no infection as long as the man cared to it.

Jack looked him over once more, noting small injuries that didn’t worry him.

Gentle snoring. The man was asleep. Jack sighed, stood, looked around the warehouse again. It felt wrong to leave him here but what else was he to do? Jack pulled the white robe off his body, folded it, and laid it over the man. With a deep sigh, he decided this was all he could do.

He turned and left the warehouse.

He did a lap around the yard, found no one else, and so left the way he had come.

***~ &&&~***

The mask stared back at him from the drawer of his bedside table, staring with knowing eyeholes. “That’s the only time,” he said to the mask. “Never again.”

“That’s what I like about you, Jack Pattillo.”

Jack jumped, whipped around. Geoff was in his room again. “Stop doing that!”

“You always do the right thing, even if it means risking yourself.” Geoff grinned, pointing finger guns at Jack as he stepped backward into the shadows. His voice dropped to a whisper, song-like, echoing from somewhere as the man faded from the room without the aid of a door; “ _Superhero_.”

Jack scoffed. Too bad he couldn’t put locks on shadows.

He laid back in bed and wrapped himself in blankets.

Superhero. How stupid.


	4. Ryan: Wisteria-Coloured Mist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan and Alfredo heist the science centre --- but when things go awry, true colours show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this from work. It's a bit embarrassing.  
> I'm trying to up my long form because I forgot that was the whole reason I am writing this fiction to start was to practice said long form. Also, this tangle mess of a fic is getting a little away from me, but alas. It seems both you and I will be surprised by whatever twists and turns this story takes.  
> Regardless, onwards.

_Ryan Haywood, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
The Night of the Robbery_

“Un- _fucking_ -belivable.”

Ryan could have dropped his soda, prickled across the skin with disbelief, but Alfredo’s curse reminded him he still existed. Instead, he brought the thing to his lips and took another drink. The golden retriever wagged its tail when the handler stepped forward to praise it with a treat. Ryan’s eyes fell to the lightning-like orb that powered the psychic machine. A storm coiled inside it’s glass exterior like clouds. “That’s gotta be it,” Ryan whispered to Alfredo.

“Hell, yes.”

Around them, people bustled to examine the science exhibits, moving less like a crowd and more like slime that caught in corners and slid about. To his left, a cameraman and a staff member --- a familiar staff member --- moved by them to get to the next exhibit, but Ryan was too entranced by the stormy orb to get a better look at them. His gaze fell to the right and he and Alfredo exchanged proud smirks. Ryan grinned, pulled the switch he’d been fiddling with in his pocket, and held it out to Alfredo. “Care to do the honours?”

“Do I?” Alfredo joked, taking the switch in his hands. “Why, of course, Ryan.” He pressed the switch. Nothing happened. Alfredo looked up at Ryan who took the switch back and offered a hangdog smile.

“Okay, so, it takes time.” He shoved the switch back in his pocket. “Just give it a sec.”

A beat.

Blackness.

Silence.

Ryan grinned, reaching blindly into his pocket and producing a skull-shaped mask. “Show time.”

For a long moment, inky blackness submerged the centre but the back-up lights to kicked on and faintly illuminated along the ceiling. The people were stilled, murmuring in concerned tongues, stepping out of their way unconsciously as they moved. He and Alfredo hurried to a Staff Door lit by a bright red exit sign and slipped into it undetected. Alfredo shut the door with a quiet click.

They ran together down the halls, dim lights guiding them like spirits passed several doors that, if Ryan recalled correctly, lead to different exhibitions. The one they wanted was a left and then the first door after that.

As they rounded the corner, the handler and his golden retriever were standing in the middle of the hall, looking about the hallways amiss. Ryan pulled a pistol from under his coat, finger off the trigger, and waved it in the air so the handler could see. In his panic, he and the dog sprinted off into another hallway.

Alfredo shook his head. “What?” Ryan snapped. “I wasn’t gonna hurt a dog. The _hell_ do you take me for?”

“No, I expected you to shoot the handler and take the dog for yourself.”

“Dammit!” Ryan snapped his fingers. “I should’a!”

Alfredo grabbed the handle and whipped open the exhibit door. “Next time,” he chuckled.

The exhibit looked much different, here on the other side. It was clean and white and not lit by back-up lights like the rest of the centre. The box still had a dog treat in it.

Alfredo crossed to the helmet, inspecting the inside and rotating it in his hands, eyebrows pinching together. Then, he stood and pulled up his burner phone. Click, click. The shutter echoed off the walls as Alfredo made circles around the machine and took pictures of every angle, the flash making purple afterimages burned in Ryan’s eyes.

Ryan narrowed his eyes on the stormy orb. He reached out with a gloved hand and plucked it from the machine, holding it up in the air. “Beautiful,” he mused. Lightning cracked within the clouds, responding to the motion and to Ryan’s fingertips.

“Stop!”

Alfredo and Ryan turned to the window and their eye contact fell to a round-faced security guard with his pistol drawn. Ryan tossed the thing in the air and caught it again. “Let’s jet,” Alfredo said and the duo took off towards the door left slightly ajar.

Ryan turned to run left, but Alfredo yelled, “That’s him!” and instead he whipped around. The scientist, Ryan recognised him from the pictures; Michael Burns. Ah, that was why he looked so familiar on the corner of his eye. Burns stared at them for a moment, all three frozen by invisible ice on their shoes, then Burns turned and sprinted back the way they came. “Go!” They sprinted together down the hall, followed him down--- “Guns!”

Ryan lifted his pistol and fired before he could even see what he was firing at. Call it instinct, luck, or skill, but the security guards who tried to come that way fell with each shot. They turned, Ryan kicked down the door to the exhibit on the left.

Two men stood dumbfounded at each other inside the time exhibit; Ryan didn’t bother to try to understand the events. “He’s tryin’a turn back time! Stop him!” Alfredo slid in from under him and opened fire. Unfortunately, Alfredo’s fire-first-look-later tactic wasn’t as smooth as Ryan’s; the machine screamed, whirred, electricity whipped across the room.

“What the fuck?”

“Uh, oh.” Alfredo immediately stood and booked it out the room again, Ryan barely stepping aside to let him pass. “Run!” The Vagabond raised his gun to fire off but the door to the hallway opened once more and Ryan had to choose between completing the mission or saving himself.

He chose to save himself.

Bullets whizzed by, Ryan barely making it around the corner, though covered in concrete dust from bullets piercing the wall beside him. Alfredo was only a handful of paces ahead of him.

Burns screamed something behind him but Ryan didn’t hear him over his own screaming; “Alfredo, what the _fuck_ is wrong with you!?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Alfredo chanted, his voice in a pitch Ryan only ever heard him use in a panic.

“I hate you!”

Boom! Something exploded and Ryan assumed it was the time machine. “At least it’s broken!” Alfredo tried.

“Shut _up_ already!”

"Maybe Burns is dead!"

"God! I said shut up!"

They continued down a winding path of hallways and doors, chased by bullets and officers. Burns was long gone in the sea of people. Ryan cursed under his breath, repeating the same damn word over and over. All wrong. This was _all wrong_.

Barking.

“Barking?”

“The psychic dog!” Alfredo gasped. “Where is it?”

Ryan slowed his sprint, listening hard. “Over here,” he said, stopping at the intersection. Down the hall, this one far wider, the retriever barked at the door. “Where’s the guy?”

He hurried down the hall to the dog. Alfredo followed him and dropped to a kneel. The retriever panted hot breath into Alfredo’s face, wagging its tail as he scratched behind its ears. “Who’s a good boy? _Who’s_ a good boy?” he cooed.

Ryan opened the door it had been barking at, unveiling an array of strange things; odd devices, electronic switches, and a janitorial cart. But what caught his eye most of all was the giant blue sword that hung on the wall. “The hell is this?” he whispered.

“More experiments?” Alfredo tried.

“Experiments at the science centre? Don’t think so.”

“Well,” Alfredo gestured with his free hand, still petting the dog with the other. “we didn’t get the scientist and we didn’t get the time machine. Maybe all this shit can make up for it.”

Ryan shrugged, grabbed a garbage bag off the janitorial cart, and started shoving things into the bag. Alfredo joined him a moment later, each filling two bags worth of oddities. Then Ryan grabbed the sword and they sprinted out the door again.

With full bags of junk, they continued their run through the centre, until they found the big red exit signs and followed them.

The exit door; they burst into the evening light, gasping for air. They stole a moment to bend at the waist, catching lost breath that puffed into smoke out their lips. Ryan was the first to move, nudging Alfredo’s shoulder with one of the bags when he passed him. “Forget the time machine, forget the guy. We take the dumbass orb and all the other junk to Trevor, we get our pay for that. At least we did something.”

Alfredo groaned, breaking to a jog after Ryan towards their getaway car. “Man, we fucked up,” he said.

“ _You_ fucked up. I did my part.”

Ryan ripped the trunk open and threw the bags and the sword inside. Alfredo just hurried into the passenger seat and clicked his seat belt on. It didn’t take long for Ryan to join him.

He flipped over the ignition, the car rumbling to life in just a few clicked. He threw the car in reverse and looked over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t back into anything.

Alfredo rubbed his hand over his eyes, shaking his head. “We fucked up so bad, Ryan,” he whined. “This is gonna kill our rep. Fuck, man, we got _nothin_ ’!”

Ryan sighed, at first in fury and then again with defeat. He tucked away frustration into that little spot in his stomach, along with all the other emotions he tended to ignore. “Goddammit,” he whispered. "He was right beside us, too. Fuckin' got distracted by a stupid dog and a stupid shiny Goddamn..." His voice trailed off. He shoved the car into drive and floored the gas pedal. With a jerk, the car squealed onto the street and sped away before anyone was any wiser. “This is the _third_ botched job in a row.” He ripped the mask off his face. “Pass me the paint, will ya, Fredo?”

“Yeah.” Alfredo opened the glove compartment and produced a tube of black ink, opening it and holding out the bottle. His eyes flickered to the sky. “Man, it got dark quick.”

Ryan bit the finger of his glove and pulled free his hand. Alfredo emptied a good dollop of paint onto his palm and Ryan smeared it across his eyes without much care. He glanced once into the rear view mirror to make sure he was content with how it faded his identity, then shoved the skull mask in his pocket. He sighed again, turning his attention to the road. “The police will be on us soon enough. We gotta ditch the car.”

Alfredo’s tone erred the edge of uncertainty. “Like, temporary ditch?”

“No. Permanent ditch.” Ryan gripped the wheel. “Cops know what to look for now. Someone must’ve tipped them off; they came so much faster than I was expecting.”

He half-expected Alfredo to argue; instead, he just sighed. “Goodbye, old friend. It’s been a good, long run.” He patted the dashboard and Ryan chortled.

He wanted to mention buying a new one, but instead what came out was, “Maybe we should take a break for a little while.”

Alfredo gasped like he’d been shot. “A break?” he echoed. “Waddaya mean? We-- We’ve been at this for literal years, Ryan! We can’t give up because of some bad luck. You’re the _Vagabond_ for God’s sake, and I’m, you know, Alfredo. Deadeye! Super sniper extraordinaire! One shot, one kill.”

“You sure killed that machine,” Ryan chided.

Alfredo shrugged. “It had it comin’.”

“I just mean,” he continued. “It seems like the cops are getting one step ahead of us.” He dropped his shoulders, took a deep breath, finally said it out loud; “I think I’m getting too old for this.”

“Old!” Alfredo echoed. “What?”

“It’s been… God, how many years?” Ryan shook his head. “Ten? Fifteen? I can’t remember.”

“Me ‘nd you’ve been doing this for the last five years,” Alfredo said. “And you’ve been on the news since I was a kid. How old _are_ you, Ryan?”

“I’m no spring chicken,” was his settled response. “I’ll admit it, Alfredo; I’m losing my edge. Being a badass... psycho... thief… _villain_... Whatever you call it, I think it’s finally caught up to me.”

“The Vagabond is retiring,” Alfredo whispered in disbelief.

Ryan jolted. “Not retiring!” Then a beat. “Not yet. I don’t think.” His heart sank, despite himself. “I mean, my whole rep is lone warrior, gun-for-hire when you want someone, like, really dead. But, ah, I dunno… I’m having a hard time pulling off a decent heist. Maybe I should do something different. You know? Get off the streets, keep the blood off my clothes. Command.” He shifted his hand into a fist and shook it to the air. “I wanna _be_ the Big Bad Boss. Not just work for him.”

There was a moment of silence, then Alfredo said, “So, an office job.”

“Ugh.” Ryan wrinkled his nose in disgust but his eyes were on the rear view mirror. Red and blue flecked his eyes. How not stealthy. “Cops on our six. And _no_ , not an _office job._ I’d rather--- Oh, who cares.” He swerved the vehicle left and slammed on the gas. Right through a red light, the sirens springing into loud whirs. Ryan sighed. “Hold on; this is gonna get rough.”

Alfredo gripped the handle above his head and sunk into his seat.

The car drifted around a corner, revved as it sped down the open street. “News,” Ryan said and it was all he had to say.

Alfredo scrambled for his burner phone and opened the Know News app. “Oo,” he sang. “They want us dead. Like _dead_ dead. They got a curfew, a copper, a fleet---”

“Ah, a slow Sunday evening,” Ryan sighed wistfully. “Explains why there’s no one on the road.”

“That was fast,” Aflredo mumbled.

They sped down the stretch, passed a Burger King, a Wendy’s, a quaint little inn that was shutting down for the night. They were coming up to a set of train tracks that crossed the road.

“Yo, the Cove!” Alfredo yelled. “We can lose them on the tracks!”

“ _O_ kay!” Ryan chirped. He pulled the handbrake, spun the car, letting it skid onto the train tracks. The tires aligned to the rails and Ryan slammed on the gas, taking off down the tracks towards the Cove. The sirens faded behind them.

Ryan bothered to slow, pulling under the awning of a parkade, across, into a wareyard. He parked under the bridge where the helicopter wouldn’t find them. He shut off the car.

The engine rumble faded, replaced only by faint waves crashing against the shore. Ryan took a deep breath. “I think we can wait it out here,” he said. His voice felt too loud in the sudden silence.

Alfredo fell his head against the seat rest and shut his eyes. “Sure,” he said.

In the silence, they rested. The Cove slipped forward and back in the darkness of night, the full moon seeing itself in the rising tide. Sirens wailed in the distance. They received no answer.

Maybe he’d fallen asleep, because the moon was higher and the sirens had subsided and the world seemed to sway with the crashing of the tide. His head was full of a grey fog that gathered behind his eyes but, try as he might, he could not doze off again. Next to him, Alfredo’s chest rose and fell with the steady, shallow breathing of half-sleep. Car seats were very uncomfortable, Ryan remembered.

“I’m going to take the stuff out of the trunk,” he said, voice breaking from disuse. “Stay here, if you want.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Ryan pulled himself out of the car and walked to the trunk, opened it. With arms made of lead, he pulled the four bags out and the sword and barely juggled them into an abandoned warehouse.

It was a shitty greenhouse-storehouse hybrid that carried the smell of moisture and plant food. Sea mist huddled at the ceiling like a swarm of bats, hanging upside down and sleepy. Two long, damp tables stretched long isle ways to the back, dotted with potted plants and gardening tools and bags of soils and dirt. Moonlight warned him of slippery concrete.

His eyes fell onto a stack of crates in the corner and he determined that a good enough hiding space.

He didn’t make it a step in before the sword clattered to the floor. Ryan cursed and kicked it aside so he wouldn’t trip as walked to the crates stacked in the corner. He shoved two bags into each crate. They creaked and cracked as he shoved them in there (other things probably broke too) but he ignored it and closed the crate again. He turned and realised how much brighter it was in the warehouse. More than moonlight was seeping in through dirty and cracked windows.

Police?

The age-old clawing of panic trilled Ryan’s throat and forced it’s way out with a quiet, worried, “ _Alfredo_.”

He produced his pistol, sprinted, slammed his shoulder against the door and came out into the light, training the barrel on the first person he saw.

Narrowly, he avoided pulling the trigger in Trevor’s face.

He dropped his shoulders and his gun. “It’s just you,” he sighed. “Fuck, you scared me.”

“Sorry.” Trevor smiled apologetically, walking from their getaway car towards Ryan. There were two other men Ryan didn’t recognise and one more car with the headlights on, casting light through the warehouse windows. Alfredo was still sat in their car, eyebrows pinched together. He stared into the dashboard of the car as if he was watching something on it. “Alfredo told me you guys botched the job.”

Ryan had been hoping to deal with this later, but he swallowed his pride and pinched his lips together. “Sorta, yeah,” he admitted.

Trevor winced. “Ouch.”

He was making harder eye contact than normal and Ryan felt forced to look. “But we didn’t come out empty handed,” Ryan continued. “We got some shit from the other exhibits---”

“But you didn’t get Burns.” There was a way Trevor spoke, as if he knew he was unthreatening and so spoke ominously to make his whole jig seem that much weirder.

There was a hesitation, then Ryan shook his head. “No. We didn’t. He tried to turn back time, and then a bullet hit the machine and the whole thing went to shit before we could get him.”

Trevor pulled back the corner of his lips, a smile that looked more like a frown. “Well, I guess what they’re saying is true.” A beat, an ominous whisper. “ _The Vagabond is losing his touch_.”

“Oh, c’m _on_ ,” Ryan scoffed, scrambling to deny a truth he had admitted less than an hour ago. “Eh, there was a cute dog, we didn’t want it to get hurt. No one wants to hurt an animal.”

Trevor looked sympathetic and it took a second for Ryan to realise it was a mocking look. “I didn’t ask you to _hurt a dog, Ryan_ ,” Ryan flinched at the sound of his own name. His heart slammed it's shoulder against it's cage made of ribs, less of fear to escape and more to strangle Alfredo for spilling his name. “I asked you to kidnap a man who’s threatening _everything_ I worked for. There’s a pretty significant difference.”

“No, and that’s _Bond_ to you, if you _must_ use one syllable,” Ryan snapped, letting frustration coat his tone. “ _You_ said trash the experiments, take expensive shit, and kidnap the guy on the way out. Burns was an _afterthought_ . Don’t you _dare_ change the agreement now.”

“You had one job, _Ryan_ , and you _blew_ it!”

Ryan opened his mouth, half-gestured to Alfredo, then stopped himself. Instead, he reached into his pocket and produced the orb. “We didn’t blow it completely.” Trevor’s eyes narrowed on the weird thing, head tilted sideways. He reached out to grab it, but Ryan pulled it away. “I still want my money.”

Trevor met his gaze and the moment was tense. Ryan regripped the pistol in his hand.

Trevor stepped away, daisily moving back towards the car. He gestured to one of his men, who walked up to the passenger side window and knocked. Alfredo jumped, looked around, and realised he was being called upon. Quietly, slowly, he got out of the vehicle and made his way to Trevor’s side.

“Don’t worry,” Trevor began, produced a gun from under his undone button up, pointed it at Ryan. “Money is going to be the _last_ of your worries.”

Alfredo took a deep breath, smiled tight at the ground, shaking his head.

That shoot-first-look-last instinct came into play; In one fell move, he smashed the orb against the ground.

It exploded.

Like a flashbang, thousands of lights sparked into the air, a million different colours. It threw Ryan backwards, encasing him in the black and purple mist that split across the sky, growing and branching like a wisteria tree neath a wobbled rainbow.

Trevor fired blindly into the commotion and Ryan felt it whip by his face by mere centimetres. He inhaled to yell but his lungs were instead filled by the smoke and breath escaped him. “Find him!” Trevor yelled.

Ryan forced himself to stand, bracing for the bullets that would likely rain on his current position. He scrambled to the side and tried to round the group in hopes of ending up behind them. It was unfortunate, however, that Ryan couldn’t see through the smoke.

He ran into Alfredo and they both crashed to the ground. Ryan couldn’t stand as quick as Alfredo, but he still had more experience and less hesitation; he leaped and tackled Alfredo down by the waist. Alfredo yelped and fell backwards with him. “Oh, shit!” The gun in Ryan’s hand went flying into the mist. Ryan leaned up, used one hand to pin Alfredo to the ground by his shoulder and the other hand cocked back a fist that connected to his eye. His head slammed against the ground and Alfredo blinked. “Oh, ow.”

Again, again, again, the same damn place until Alfredo stopped lifting his head.

Ryan hesitated, watching Alfredo nod off, felt a pang of regret and guilt and anger…He shoved those feelings into that place in his stomach. But fifteen years ago, Alfredo would’ve been dead by now, even with their history. Fifteen years ago, killing had a grand effect on him.

Now, all he felt was… _sad_.

It really had been a long time.

 _Click_. Ryan lifted his head and felt it contact a gun barrel. He shut his eyes. “Trevor, wh--- Wait. Tell me something.” A beat. He wasn’t dead yet, so he continued. “Just --- and I mean this in the most cliche way possible… Why?”

“Why?” Trevor echoed. “Are you kidding me? Look at you. You’ve gone soft. Alfredo is still alive. Burns is still out there. And you just destroyed the _only_ thing you did right tonight. Admit it, man, the Vagabond’s washed up! Fifteen years, you’ve been a bad taste of the underground world. But now, you’re slipping up. It’s only a matter of time before everyone starts to realise how _human_ you are. Everyone’s vying for your blood. Whoever kills the King reigns next, don’t you know.”

His heart missed a beat and old habits surface in that wake. Ryan smirked and shook his head. “ _Tre_ vor,” he started arrogantly. “Has it ever crossed your mind that I’m not “good” at being the villain anymore because, maybe --- just maybe --- I don’t _want_ to be?” He could hear Trevor hesitate. Good. “And has it crossed your mind that maybe I want something _else_ now? Oh! And, has it ever crossed your mind that _maybe_ I’m still, you know… _The Vagabond_?”

He didn’t waste a second. He whipped around, batted the gun away with the back of his hand before Trevor could pull the trigger. Bang! The bullet hit the ground beside Alfredo’s head. Ryan couldn’t stand with his weight all twisted, so he opted to grab Trevor’s shooting arm and drag him down instead.

Trevor tightened a fist with his free hand and it connected to the back of Ryan’s head. It was a weak punch, backed mostly by gravity, and it only served to piss Ryan off. He flipped over Trevor, pulling him along by the arm, following up to his wrist to wrestle the gun out of his hands. Trevor was small, not built for fighting the way Ryan was, and ripping the gun out of his hands was easy.

Ryan threw the pistol aside, cocked back a fist, nailed Trevor in the eye. A matching bruise for matching faces. He pulled back again, ready to land another, but instead was the one to receive a blow to the back of the head --- _again_!

This time, it knocked the world off its axis and it crashed into his shoulder. Trevor scrambled to untangle himself from underneath Ryan and he crawled backwards towards his lost pistol.

Ryan spun himself over his shoulder, somehow avoiding a bullet trained for his heart. He looked up, finally saw Trevor’s goon who had caught him off guard. Ryan pulled a knife from his boot and whipped it into the man’s arm. He dropped his gun and retreated.

His eyes turned to focus on Trevor who pulled his pistol off the ground --- and then stopped. Ryan furrowed his eyebrows together, finally rising up again, scanned the area for any other surprise attacks, then looked at Trevor again.

Trevor stared at the ground with wide, distant eyes, mouth agape. He unfroze only to look up at Ryan and he recognised the look of fear. People in fights often stared at him in horror not for what he could do, but what he could bring; Trevor’s fear was different. _Otherworldly_ . “What _are_ you?” he whispered.

Bang, a flash from the smoke.

The rainbow lights faded. The mist began to dissipate.

All of Ryan’s muscles tensed, something tore apart his stomach, his intestines, out his back. He stood for barely a second, then collapsed to his knees. In the fading of the smoke, Alfredo was still crouched on the ground, a gun trained on Ryan, barrel smoking.

He put his hands to his stomach, pulled his hand away from his stomach to witness the blood on his fingers. Ryan opened his mouth to speak but he couldn’t estrange anything from his lips but a shaky, “ _Alfredo_?”

Something snapped like a piano string pulled too taut inside. Anger, hurt, Ryan felt it well from the place inside his stomach up his chest, out his throat, and emotion burst like a dam through his facade. He screamed from the depths of his chest and threw his arm aside; the same instinct that sent bullets to places he couldn’t see yet, the same instinct that saved his life---

Purple, black, _anti-light_. The only words Ryan could summon to explain what happened.

Like a dark wind, it buffeted against Alfredo and sent him flying into the warehouse. Trevor snapped his head sideways, panicked, fearful, and then worried. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

Ryan dropped his arm, everything drew still, and then one of Trevor’s men yelled, “Cops!”

Sharp eyes turned to Ryan, pursed lips and wrinkled nose. "I _will_ find you, _Ryan Haywood_ ," he growled. Then, he bolted back towards the warehouse. Ryan stole this chance to save himself. In the remains of mist, he ducked downward and squirmed under a rusted old truck --- but it wasn’t necessary. Trevor threw Alfredo into the back of the getaway car and the two cars sped off, chased by officers.

A long silence.

The waves continued to crash against the shore.

Ryan breathed, salt sticking to his ribs and crusting and cracking when his chest rose and fell. It burned. His lungs, his stomach, everything burned. Pain came in sharp waves, threatening him with eternal blackness; the promise of release from a broken body; the fear of skyward judgement peeling unconsciousness back like an orange peel.

Not desiring to die beneath an old truck, he crawled out from below and crossed, limped and injured and clutching at his wound, to the warehouse.

He pushed the door. Open, close. The mist lingered here still but seemed to have faded into the sky above. He heaved himself down the aisle until his legs buckled from under him and he collapsed onto his free hand and his knees. He gripped the wound tighter, grunting, pulling himself under a table so at least he’d be out of immediate sight.

The most comfortable position was leaning up against the cold metal wall. The ice soothed the ache in his back --- or maybe it was the shock. He refused to look down.

Death, he supposed, had come for him at last. It felt so undignified to die in a warehouse with a bullet in his stomach and a knife in his back but perhaps this was just how it was meant to be.

Maybe only one regret, he thought. Maybe only one.

He shut his eyes and let his head fall backward. He quelled the death-panic in his chest. His hand fell from the wound into a puddle of blood. “Retirement,” he mumbled. “Should’ve…” But his voice trailed off with his consciousness into the bleak anti-light.

Darkness, he reminded himself. It’s called darkness.


	5. Gavin: Vicarious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gavin reviews the footage from the North Havermeyer Robbery.

_Gavin Free, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
The Morning After the Robbery_

The inn was warm when he came through the front door, scrambling to afix his camera bag that kept flailing about him. Anxiety pricked his chest with needles and he couldn’t steady his fingers enough to fix himself up. “Welcome!” the innkeeper yelled from the back. “Welcome back to the Hunter’s Home. Can I get you anything?”

Gavin shot his head up, scrambling to gather himself. The innkeeper came into the front hall light, a gentle face, kind eyes, and a beard that put Gavin’s own to shame. “I, uh, no, thank you.” He tried to swallow but nausea wobbled up like a blind snake and Gavin started to cross towards the staircase at the back.

“You-- You’re the photographer, right?”

 _Videographer_ , he corrected sourly, but instead he said, “Yeah, sure.”

“Are you okay?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Alright. Just let me know if you need anything.”

He didn’t spare the innkeeper a glance; he skipped up the stairs to the first floor. Room 104. His hands trembled enough that he struggled with the keys almost a full minute, but he finally unlocked it and found himself in the warmth of familiarity. The tension in his shoulders dropped and he could breathe again.

He took a moment to ground himself by scanning the room. It was a small bachelor's apartment, painted in clean off-white walls and dark hardwood floors. To the right, a double bed with the fluffiest blankets Gavin had ever had the pleasure of sleeping with, a desk (per his request), and a matching bedside table and dresser. On the left, a line of cupboards and a fridge, and a door to a bathroom with the world’s smallest vanity and a stand-up shower.

There were few decorations that dotted his room but it was otherwise empty. His suitcase was still packed. All his electronics were not.

There was no time to waste; he crossed his room to the desk and opened his laptop. He produced the camera, ejected the SD card, and shoved it into the card slot. Only in a few moments would he be scrolling through the images and videos from that day.

It was the last video was most interested in.

The video began with Skull Face and Handkerchief Guy and the stormy orb Gavin recognised from the Psychic exhibit. Then Gavin’s speedy retreat to the Time Travel exhibit. Bullets. The camera hit the ground, spinning to an angle that showed nothing but the wall at the back.

Handkerchief Guy shot the machine. The camera jiggled again when Gavin picked it up to run. The explosion. The camera fell again, this time trained on the glass beyond the time exhibit.

Everything in the crowd was still, except a single man who stood amongst them in a white-and-black tuxedo. Gavin squinted, leaning close to the screen. The figure was fuzzed, mere pixels on his screen, but most certainly, he was moving. Who was that? And how did Gavin not seem him on the way out? He stirred in the video. And then everything blurred like a fast-motion shot; out the exhibit, down the hall, out the door, out the building, into the alley. “Oh!” He tore his eyes away, doubling over the side of his chair, and scrambled to keep himself from becoming motion sick.

His phone rang, a pixelated melody that drifted like a dream with a piercing pitch.

Gavin cursed to himself and pulled it from his pocket, fumbling with it in the air before he managed to catch it. The screen blinked a familiar face and a familiar name. He answered. “Dan!”

“‘Ey, B!” Dan chirped on the other line. “Don’t sound so happy to hear from me. I’ll get used to it.”

Gavin ignored him. “The craziest thing happened, you’re never gonna believe it!”

“Already don’t.”

“Then reckon I’d bother not telling you.”

“Oh, get on with it,” Dan was trying to keep the whine out of his voice, unsuccessfully. “The suspense is _killin’_ me. Did you get to play with somethin’ fun?”

“No. Wish.” Gavin hesitated. “There was a robbery.”

“A what?”

“A robbery. Someone _robbed_ the museum.”

“Robbed!” A shocked silence. And then, “Did you get a good shot of it at least?”

Gavin scoffed. “Oh, cheers. I’m fine. Thanks for askin’.”

“Well, you’re not in hospital,” Dan concluded. “And obviously you’re not hurt or that would’a been the first thing out your gob.”

He wrinkled his nose, only because Dan couldn’t see. “Well,” he continued. “Yes, I did happen to get a recording of the robbery but that’s not the weird part.”

“Oh?” Genuine interest. His voice tipped upward and teetered on the edge of unnecessary. “What’s weirder than a robbery at a science centre?”

“Onn’a the machine’s blew up and everything got all kinda… _weird_.”

“Ay, B, this is the only time I’ll say it, but could you use more scientific terms? ‘Weird’ doesn’t really do much for me.” Gavin stood up and began to pace about his room aimlessly. Sirens and lights blew passed his window and he barely made it to the window to look. He shoved his face against the glass, blowing fog that kept him from seeing anything. “Gav?”

“This whole thing is just weird,” he whispered into the pane, before recalling Dan’s request. He peeled his face off the window. “It was the time machine. It exploded and it… Oh, God, this sounds absolutely _bonkers_.”

“What? What happened?”

Gavin stole a deep breath and shook his head. “I think it froze time all around me.”

There was a long pause. A moment of processing, and then Dan burst out into a round of laughter. Gavin frowned. “Froze time around you? Did you hit your head? Maybe you should’a gone to the hospital.”

“No work’ll get done with us both in hospital,” Gavin countered. “But I know what I saw. You gotta believe me, Dan, I swear to God, I _swear_ \---”

“Well, yeah, I believe you.”

A pause. Gavin stopped his pacing in the middle of the room. “You do?”

“Fuck no!” The response was harsh enough to piss off Gavin even though Dan was laughing. “Are you havin’ a laugh? You, a science vlogger, on your science vacation --- without _me_ , might I add --- got caught in a science explosion, and got super powers. Are you trying to fuck with me? ‘Cause it’s not working.”

“I said nothin’ about super powers, Dan! Clean out your damn ears! Also, I’d hardly call this a vacation.”

Dan sighed dramatically. “Oh, sorry, now you freezing time got a lot more believable.”

“ _I_ didn't freeze time! And it was a one off thing.” Gavin hesitated. “I hope.”

“Or at least the next time it happens, let me be there with you!”

A beat. Then, Gavin smirked, thin lips pulled up every so slightly. “Are you jealous ‘cause you didn’t get caught up in a robbery, Gruchy?”

Dan’s voice hit a pitch Gavin recognised as a lie tell. “No! Never! Why would I want to get--- Gav, you can’t possibly think--- You know I’m in the hospital _‘cause_ I got shot, right?”

Gavin swallowed cotton. “Right, B, how could I forget? It’s all you bitched about since you got back to England.”

“Wasn’t bitchin’,” Dan mumbled. “Send me the footage, will ya? Reckon we can put it on the channel?”

Gavin scoffed and sank back into his computer chair again. “Reckon not,” he replied. “There’s not much to see. ‘Sides, might get into a tad bit of trouble bein’ places I wasn’t supposed to be.”

“Oh, hell, can’t wait to see this.”

Gavin sent the files through Discord and huffed. “There. Sent.”

“Sweet.” There was a silence as Gavin imagined Dan was watching the videos. He flipped his phone into speaker mode and waited. “Wow, you fuckin’ idiot! You chased them in there?” Gavin shrugged, even if Dan couldn’t see. Another pause. “Oh, wow.” Once more. “Oh, wow!”

“Video evidence, B. I told ya.”

“Aye,” was all Dan could manage. A few more seconds, and then Dan snapped, “You absolute mong, you could’a been killed!”

Gavin pulled his lips back. “Ah, yeah, could’a… Honestly, dependin’ on how the science centre does, might just have to call quits and come home early.”

“Please do,” Dan said. “I’m dying. Like, not literally, but I’m so. Damn. _Bored_.” Dan went quiet as he commenced the second video and Gavin popped open Chrome to browse social media in the meantime. Though, he didn’t get far before Dan offered a disgusted tone, “Aw, hell, B. You seen this?”

“What?”

“The audio is atrocious!”

“What do you mean?”

“Durin’ the black out, an’ you’re doin’ your little intro bit that you always do. There’s someone else speaking.”

Gavin furrowed his eyebrows. He hadn’t seen that one yet. He pulled it up and the video started on it’s own. An image of his own face talking the dim fade of the back-up lights. The audio was as bad as Dan said; two voices, speaking over one another at equal volume. “Hello, there, I’m Gav and I am at the---” Immediately, he paused the video. For sure, Gavin recognised it.

He pinched his eyebrows together and rewound the video, starting from the beginning again.

“Hello, there, I’m Gav---”

“--going on? I don’t---”

“And I’m at the---”

“Fix it before---”

“North Havermeyer Science Centre---”

“I’ll do it myself.”

“In Achievement Hunter, Texas.”

Gavin inched forward, then pulled up his camera bag and dug through until he determined his missing piece of equipment; Burns’s microphone. “That’s Burns,” Gavin said.

“Michael Burns, the science bloke?”

“Yeah, he was showin’ me around.” Gavin rubbed his mouth, keeping only his index finger tangled in his beard. His chin rested into his palm and the elbow rested on the desk. “I didn’t get my microphone back from him.”

“He sounds absolutely livid.”

“Probably is,” Gavin chortled. “His whole science debut got wrecked by some arseholes in stupid masks.”

Dan scoffed. “Enough to ruin anyone’s day.” A beat. He must’ve rewatched the other video, because he asked, “So, what’s this about tryin’a turn back time?”

Gavin jolted like he’d been electrocuted, scrambling for the keyboard. “Right! I forgot about that. Skull Face seemed to think Burns was gonna turn back time.”

“That’s bloody stupid.”

“He seemed really certain.”

“Then he’s certainly stupid.”

“I mean, I agree, but _why_ are you such a bore, Dan?”

“A _bore_ !” Dan sneered. “I’m bein’ _realistic_ , B. Hate bein’ lead around like some idiot.”

“Just ‘cause it makes you insecure that you can and _will_ be lead around, innit? Well, stop that and help me figure out what Burns is sayin’.”

He didn’t need to see Dan to know he was probably pursing his lips together, exhaling sharply through his nose like he always did when he was discontent. At least now Dan had something to do that wasn’t staring at the ceiling.

Gavin spent a little time trying to open the raw video and audio files. There had to be a way he could separate them by input. As he did, he stole the silence for small talk. “How you healin’ up, by the way?”

“Good, I reckon,” Dan said. “Nurse is pretty.”

“How ‘bout your wounds?”

“Fine! One lung’s still all fucky but I reckon that’s to be expected.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothin’,” Gavin scrunched his nose. Dan continued, “Nurses are tryin’ to convince me to quit smoking, so I reckon that’s the problem.”

“And you’ll quit smoking?”

Dan laughed and said nothing and Gavin rolled his eyes.

Their video editor seemed to separate video from the audio but not the two audio files from each other. Gavin hummed a little less than a dissatisfied growl. Dan laughed again, less amused. “Oh, B. Please tell me you’ve heard the last thing Burns said in the video.”

“No, I’ven’t got that far.”

“Oh, damn, B, you gotta get outta there.”

“How you mean?”

“Burns is _lookin’_ for you.”

Gavin cocked his head to the side and furrowed his eyebrows together. “I reckon he should,” he countered. “I’m a big name, you know, and my disappearance would be bad for him.”

“I don’t think he was worried for your safety. Just, have a listen, B. You’ll see what I mean.”

Gavin skipped to the end of the second video, after the fast-shot through the museum. Over his own laboured breath, the camera pointed downward at the alley floor, he could hear Burns clearly; “Where did Free go? Find him and---”

The video ended. Gavin shivered. That tone was commanding, desperate. Not worried-desperate. Panicked-desperate. Angry-desperate. Find him and _what_?

“Huh.”

“So, you’re comin’ back to England then?” Dan asked hopefully, quickly, and Gavin smiled.

“If there’s nothing else to be here for,” he said. “I reckon the science centre’ll be closed a while. Could come back another time.”

“And I could come!” Dan chirped. “Never been to America. That’d be neat.”

“Neat,” Gavin echoed. “Till you realise just how packed this place is. And hot.”

“Rather be anywhere but here. Besides, I can handle a little heat. Been to Afgan, haven’t I?”

Gavin, again, ignored the twist in his stomach. “Right, B. Right, I’ll let you go. Get some rest and I’ll call you again when I’m leavin’ for England.”

“Tomorrow?”

“G’night, B.”

“Worth a shot. Goodnight.”

Gavin cut the line and threw his phone carelessly onto the desk. Orange light glinted off the cracked screen, shining back into Gavin’s eyes. He squinted, repositioned the phone, and returned to the laptop again. Find him. Burns’s words echoed in his head. He sounded less like a scientist and more like an evil mastermind, the way he commanded.

Or maybe it had been a crazy night and he should stop letting his imagination get the better of him. He was disappointed he didn’t get a chance to go more in detail about the frozen time thing, but if it really was a one-off then Gav would just have to keep it until he saw Dan in person. Likely, he’d be more open-minded when he wasn’t closed in somewhere bland and boring.

Gavin opted to retire for the night, determined to leave the past where it was, but the uneasiness didn’t rest with him.

***~ &&&~***

Something had gone down at the Cove while he had been asleep. The Know displayed what it could from the previous night’s events, the view of a purple and black smoke cloud from a bird’s eye view. Gavin sat on the couch, chewing away at fat and fluffy pancakes the innkeeper offered for breakfast that morning.

“You seem much better,” the innkeeper commented, rounding the couch to take his place next to him. “Did you sleep well?”

Gavin spared him a glance for the first time that day and nearly recoiled at how tired those kind eyes came. “Oh. Yes,” he said. “Did you?”

“As well as I could,” the innkeeper replied. “But all the commotion kept me up last night. I’m glad it didn’t bother you at all.”

“Right.” Gavin stole another syrupy bite and glanced upwards towards the news again.

Now they were interviewing Burns in front of the science centre. “Ash Samaya from the Know,” said the reporter. “What is the future of Immersion and the North Havermeyer Science Centre in light of this recent robbery?”

“We plan to reopen again by the end of the week, once we have taken into account for what was stolen,” Burns said. He was tidy and straight, graceful and calm. Gavin wrinkled his nose then realised he had no reason for his distaste.

“Can you tell us what was taken and how it could be related to events at the Cove last night?”

“I sincerely doubt anything of mine caused that disaster at the Cove,” Burns said. “We haven’t inventoried everything yet and, if we did, we would prefer to keep that to our privacy.”

“Why would anyone want to steal from the science centre?”

“Our science is highly sophisticated, although harmless. I believe that they thought our exhibits were something they’re not and they’ll be disappointed to discover they may have blown a few details out of proportion.”

“What do you think they intend to do with the stolen property?”

“What they intend to do and what they can do are very different.” Burns’s jaw tightened. Gavin shifted. “So, I’m sure it doesn’t matter.”

The reporter inched forward. “So, what _can_ they do?”

Burns hesitated, then smiled. “Let’s not give them any ideas,” he settled, then waved his hand and started back up towards the building. “That’s enough questions for today.”

Everyone started talking, pushing upwards towards the building, and then the scene switched back to a pink-haired man with papers in his hand. “The North Havermeyer Science Centre is set to reopen on Saturday with new exhibits. In related news, the identities of the thieves have been revealed to be renown criminal masterminds, The Vagabond and his unnamed partner who had been dubbed The Sauce.”

Their pictures were far more menacing than Gavin recalled them being but seeing their pictures and hearing their rep made his skin crawl. He laughed, tight bubbles rising from his chest. “Oh, _shit_.”

“What’s up?” the innkeeper asked.

“I saw those guys,” Gavin explained. “I was far closer to them than I would’a liked.”

“Wow. You saw the Vagabond and survived?” The Innkeeper huffed and shook his head. “Luck’s on your side.”

“Right.” He kept the part about the time machine to himself. “So, uh, I might be leaving sooner than I expected. Just so you know.” A beat. “You can keep the down payment for the week, I don’t particularly care, but the room can be cleared for you by overmorrow.”

The innkeeper frowned. “Alright. Sorry the robbery cut your stay so short.”

“I’ll be back,” Gavin assured him. “Friend of mine’s in hospital, so I figure I should stay with him a bit and we’ll be back together.”

“Oh! Wow, I guess all your luck went to keeping you alive.”

“No, it’s his own luck he’s alive,” Gavin sighed. “But, anyways, I’ll be leaving for England again in a few days.”

“I appreciate the heads up,” said the innkeeper. “but, if I may ask, what’re you going to be doing the next few days?”

Gavin hummed uncertainly, then pinched the corner of his lip back. “Not sure,” he admitted. “But I got a few ideas.”


	6. Ryan: Devil Voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan discovers his newfound powers and proceeds to learn how to use them. Unfortunately, they come with a strange side-effect...

_Ryan Haywood, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
The Morning After the Robbery_

He woke with a start, reaching outwards for something he wasn’t sure of. His chest heaved for air and sweat-drenched his hair, his jaw, the spaces between his fingers. He held his hand outward, red-stained fingers trembling in the beige morning light.

The sun poured in buckets through the uncurtained windows and spilled across the floor and glistened off the puddles that formed in the pores of the concrete. Ryan slowly lowered his hand, every joint on his arm creaking, until he felt the cool ground, first with his fingers and then his whole body.

He pushed himself up. His body ached but didn’t burn. The memories of the previous night loitered in his brain before picking themselves up and standing in order. Alfredo. Trevor. The gun. The light.

Ryan groaned.

He found himself sitting again against the wall, reaching down for his wound, wondering by what miracle he woke this morning. A white cloth dropped from his shoulder and he squinted at the gift, soaked now in his blood. His fingers brushed against a rough patch of skin and he pulled back his jacket, lifted his shirt, to unveil what was supposed to be an oozing, infected bullet wound: instead, he only found the remnants of crusted blood and a deep, deep scar. “Oh,” he mumbled. “That’s… interesting.”

A white robe, a healed wound. Ryan wasn’t terribly religious but it seemed he had been visited by an angel. For all this bad karma he should have racked up, it was amazing he could breathe, let alone skip a trip to the ER.

He stood, folding the white robe and setting it on the table pulled out from its line. Guess his angel couldn’t fly. No matter. He set off into a morning he didn’t think he’d have the privilege of having --- and he didn’t intend to treat it like it wasn’t a gift.

The air was particularly salty that morning and the sun was bright over the Cove. Ripples of young waves flicked yellow sunlight in all directions. When the waves crashed along the rock wall, refreshing sprays of ocean water fell upon his face and melded with the sweat and blood and paint.

Ryan drew a lungful of salty-sweet air, opening his chest and his arms, welcoming the new day. If he wasn’t in so much dizzying pain, he could’ve mistaken this for Heaven. Or maybe he was just that happy to be alive.

I _will_ find you, _Ryan Haywood_.

The beauty of the morning didn’t change but his heart sank all the same. His name. His Goddamn name. He planted his hands on his hips and stared out over the ocean. Well, wasn’t that just grand? Anger spilled up again, an overflowing well of dormant emotions, and Ryan pushed them back down. It hurt, like he’d swallowed a steak piece he didn’t quite chew enough.

Deep breath. In, filling his lungs with sticky salt. Out, a purple-black fog. Ryan furrowed his eyebrows, watching it dissipate upwards towards the sky.

“Oh. Well,” he dismissed.

He turned on his heel and started out of the wareyard, down the tracks towards Main Street. Tall business buildings that looked abandoned (but probably weren’t) stood tall on either side, narrowing the long way down the tracks. Red and brick brown, metal walls, dilapidated windows fitted with forgotten curtains.

The more Ryan walked, the closer the walls seemed to grow. He stopped dead in his tracks and the walls retreated to where they were supposed to be. His eyes cast upwards, staring down every window, searching for the eyes that were hunting him. He could feel each heartbeat pulse through his body. His tongue turned to cotton. His chest ached with every laboured breath he took.

Nothing happened.

Shaking his head, he continued down the tracks. The walls narrowed in on him. Pinpricks on his eyeballs, white dots consuming his vision. He stopped again and shut his eyes. The distinct feeling of being hunted, the dread that wove nightmares filled the place where thrill used to sit. Don’t, he thought. Don’t.

The cawing of seagulls pulled him out. Gentle was the light when his eyes opened again. He felt the ground beneath the soles of his shoes, the salted wind against his back. His heart nestled back into its normal rhythm. The walls kept their distance. Cars crossed the tracks where it intersected at the road.

The clouds kept crawling across the sky. The Earth kept turning.

Ryan kept moving.

The blood on his jacket crusted when it buffeted in the wind and he was reminded his face was still half-painted and his jacket and pants and everything was stained with his own blood. He’d need some damn good luck if he was engaged in conversation about blood on his hands and a wound that magically healed. He could pretend to be mad and babble off about Angels and Devils, but he doubted that would go over any better.

And left uncertain that Alfredo wouldn’t have spilled everything to Trevor and Trevor hadn’t sold said information to Kingkillers, Ryan couldn’t trust the underground to keep a secret of his whereabouts.

He was a wanted man in too many capacities. 

Palms pressed against his eyes and he heaved a great sigh. If only he’d been younger... Or maybe he should stop talking himself down and get a plan together.

At least he was alive.

The last storehouse had curtains hanging in the windows and an idea weaved itself together in his head. The bright red side door called his attention, despite warning no entry. Ryan tried the door and smiled when it opened. (Oh, he’d hate to climb the fire escape in his condition, though it wouldn’t be the first time).

He slipped into the cool darkness, letting the door shut behind him.

A wide-open room with metal grate rafters above. The second floor was visible from the first, only lining the outside walls with railings the only saviour. He could imagine armed guards patrolling them, dazed with boredom. He felt like he just stepped into a video game.

Dust speckled the light beams that slipped between the holey curtains, warming a particular spot in the middle of the concrete floor. Refracted light barely lit the shadowed corners which Ryan’s eyes kept drawing to, watching carefully for unexpected movement or homeless figures but found nothing of concern.

That feeling of being hunted returned, though weaker and more manageable.

He wasted no time crossing the open to the staircase on the other side, his boots echoing only once off the barren walls. From the deep thudding to metallic clinks, he stepped up the stairs with a rested hand on the railing that slid along his ascent.

 _Mildew_ , a voice whispered, low and sinister and not unlike his own. Ryan became acutely aware of the smell of mildew growing as he walked. Of dust. Of rust that crinkled under his glove. All the sounds he made were too loud. He limited his breathing, despite the stairs winding him, and strained to hear for anything else.

A rat skittered below.

That was all.

On the second floor, he stalked along the rafters until he came to the moth-eaten curtains, off-colour and torn. He lifted the fabric, considered it’s thickness, then nodded. “Good enough.” He stripped down his jacket, his shirt, everything save his boxers and his boots. He ripped the curtain from its rod and wrapped it tight around his waist, covering the still-bloody scar and anything else that might draw attention other than the fact he was wearing a worn-out curtain.

 _Eat._ Ryan’s stomach growled. He shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, something burning holes into his back with eyes---

He whipped around, reached for a gun that wasn’t there, and felt his heart leap into his throat when he realised his defenselessness. He narrowed his eyes into the shadow, the light of the window diminishing his sight enough that his brain could paint any images it wanted from the darkness.

His legs locked, rusted iron joints. His heart slammed, his lungs---

He shut his eyes. Don’t.

He opened them. Nothing happened.

Furiously, he slammed a palm against his face and rubbed his eyes, then his mouth. “I’m losing my damn mind,” he muttered to himself and, with more purpose, he gathered his clothes and returned to the space below. He shoved them in a dark corner somewhere, pulled his wallet and his phone from his jacket pockets, then burst into the light. It didn’t do any better to calm his nerves but at least he could focus on the next thing; buying a new set of clothes.

As if not a thing was wrong, Ryan started down the street towards a thrift shop he’d been to once but not bought anything from.

People stared as they passed and he regarded them gracefully with a nod. One man laughed, shaking his head, and Ryan returned the smile with a, _It’s one of those days_ looks. One woman tried to scold him and he dismissed her with a, “Working on it right now, actually.”

He did not stop until he got to the thrift store.

As his hand reached for the door, he noted the No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service sign. Well, he had half of those, so he’d be half-allowed to shop there.

A security guard stood inside and Ryan tried to keep himself from laughing when they made eye contact. She was a tall woman, taller than him, though thin with a small mouth pursed into distaste the minute she saw him. “Hi,” he began, pulling back his lips to a sheepish smile. “I know how this looks and I hate to say---”

“No shirt, no service.”

“Well, actually, I’m here to buy a---”

“No _shirt_ , no _service_.”

Ryan stepped back, lifting his free hand (the other clutching the curtain in place) in a defensive pose. His smile widened to a terrified grin. “Please?”

“No _shirt_ , no---”

“Service, yes, I get it.” He slunk back, running a hand through his hair. _Just kill her_ , came a voice. His voice, but definitely and most decidedly not. Ryan batted his eyes, shook his head, casting his gaze in a thousand directions but never catching the sight of the voice. “What?”

_Just kill her._

“Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.” She rounded on him and he backed into the glass door, the window freezing cold on a bareback. 

_Fucking kill her and take the clothes, just do it._

“Sir.”

Ryan shook his head. Dizzied and dazed, he fumbled for the handle but couldn’t find it fast enough. That feeling of being hunted, the white spots in his eyes --- the hell was with this panic attack bullshit? From that place in his stomach, years of frustration boiled over, and he tried to swallow another tennis ball-sized piece of steak to keep calm. “Enough,” he tried, but his voice failed him.

_Do it._

“Sir--” He balled a fist and slammed it against the glass. The forced rippled back into his arm, grounding him for a mere second before she started again, reaching for her belt. “Hey!” she snapped. “If you’re not going to leave, I’ll have to make you.”

“A minute.”

“No, now.” He remembered the black wind, Trevor’s terror, and a thousand other things. The voice became a choir of demons, chanting a violent phrase. Anger numbed his body and made his head spin. The wound burned and suddenly that glass could not be cold enough. “Sir--”

“Stop!”

Silence rang like a gun had just been fired. Everything stopped. Violence ceased, though his stomach still ached from tensing his muscles too much. His breathing slowed, his heart ached but rested. All at once, his body weakened and his knees almost buckled from underneath him.

Actually, dare he say, he almost felt _better_.

Ryan finally looked to the security guard, hand on her belt but otherwise frozen midstep. She was still breathing, still staring him down but her expression lax and her eyes wet with tears. He stepped away, waved a hand in front of her face. Her eyes did not move.

Take the clothes. That thought was his own this time and, while committing crimes as Ryan Haywood was not something he preferred, he assumed his whole life was in shambles enough anyways that it didn’t matter. He carried on into the store but only made a few steps before he stopped again.

Everyone else in the store had stopped, too.

A cashier held a barcode over the scanner, a repeated beep as it registered the same item over and over and over again; the only sound other than his breathlessness. One woman had been thumbing through the clothes and stopped as if she had found something interesting but it was a truly hideous shirt.

Ryan continued, hesitant at first and then hasty, scrambling to find anything that would fit his body.

The men’s section was empty of people, so he threw aside the curtain and grabbed the first pair of blue jeans he could find. He slipped them on over his boots and then carried on to the shirts. He plucked a grey graphic t-shirt off the rack, slipped that on, then found a black leather jacket and put that on, too.

He returned to the front, where the beeping continued. He produced his wallet from the back pocket of his new jeans and slid a fifty down onto the desk. “Sorry for all the trouble,” he said, offering the cashier a smile. He noted the item she was scanning, some frilly looking home decor, then regarded the customer. “You can get those at Home Sense for cheaper.” He continued up to the front door where the security guard stood, still frozen with the hand on her belt. He produced another twenty, gently padded it into her hand, awkwardly forcing her fingers around the paper bill. “Keep up the good work.”

Then he walked out the front door.

His chest puffed up like a peacock, arrogant and proud. The mood whiplash could’ve broken his neck --- one moment, he was panicked and deathly angry and then the next he felt he could take over the world.

Someone, some young man in a cowboy hat, walk in front of him and Ryan couldn’t help himself but test a theory; “Stop.”

The man stopped mid-step and damn near almost fell over. Ryan broke into the biggest grin. He rounded the young man, expressively examining his features --- a strong jaw, shaped stubble, and small eyes. He had a bad roadburn on his left cheek that Ryan chose to ignore. He plucked the hat off him, fiddled with it a bit, tried it on and admired himself in the reflection of a building window. Then, laughing, he set the hat back on the man’s head and noted the hangover bags and fire of fury in his eyes. “Sorry,” he said as his chuckle subsided, pursing his lips in a wave of sympathy. “I just… Uh, hope your day gets better.”

He waved his hand and continued on.

“Stop. Stop. Stop,” to every person that passed him and they all halted in their tracks. He discovered quite quickly that when one command was given, the last one was broken, and he earned himself a couple stares like that. “Wonder if…” He caught eyes with an old man and couldn’t help the old pull of mischief. “Dance.”

The old man started swaying as much as his body would allow, bobbing his head to unheard music, snapping his fingers, even rotating his shoulders a bit. Classic white man dance but he had a good rhythm. Ryan snickered and stepped in place beside him to join. This was _too_ much fun.

 _Command a driver to stop,_ said the voice and Ryan shrugged. The first car that passed with the window open, he yelled, “Stop!”

The driver didn’t slam on the brakes as he expected; instead, the car continued to roll forward towards a red light where people in their crowd crossed and fear ripped apart Ryan’s chest. “No, that’s not what I meant! I meant, stop the car! Hey!”

But the car didn’t stop.

A thousand cold spikes pricked into his chest, spinning the gears of his head as fast as he could. He turned to the old man again. He yelled louder than he intended to, a single command; “Dance!”

Several people, including the old man, burst into their best dance moves. The driver snapped from his daze and slammed on the brakes, inches from piling over a crowd of people.

The crowd didn’t seem to care, except for one man who spat on the hood of the car and cursed the driver.

Ryan’s chest _ached_. His heart slammed against his ribs and the entire world was spinning from equal parts horror and relief. Ryan leaned forward and put his hands on his knees, glancing backward at the old man. “Breathe,” he told him and everyone stopped dancing. The old man grumbled and went back to his day.

Ryan stumbled, looking between the group of people and then breaking into a brisk walk, then a jog, down the street.

If his poor heart didn’t give out from the run, then his legs surely would.

***~ &&&~***

To his surprise, he made it all the way to the Stone Bridge before he ran out of steam and slowed to a walk. It was only midday but the air had considerably cooled to a late summer temperature and his gasping breath came in puffs of lingering white fog, which relieved Ryan considerably.

The voices hadn’t spoken in a while and the glow of power had since subsided.

Clouds gathered in grey clutches, choking all the colour out of the sky. The wind and waves played like clumsy puppies between North Pidd and the mainland, playful and ignorant of anyone caught between the game.

Uptown Achievement City twinkled across the lake, winking and beckoning with fancy buildings and airplanes that circled overhead. Ryan took a deep breath. Nowhere in all of Achievement City was safe so him, with both his names being whispered with deadly delight over exchanging coin. Damn that Alfredo.

Instead of anger, he was filled with a sorrow no different from sugar water tainted with blood. The wind whistled a faintly tune, pushing back against his face. He shoved his hands into his pockets and considered the island city. Fifteen years wasn’t so bad, he thought. It wouldn’t be so bad to leave.

The wind burst against his face again and made him squint.

 _This is your town,_ said the voice after a silence that wasn’t long enough. _This is your home._

“Oh, fuck off,” he snapped, shoving his hands deeper into his jacket pockets. He already missed his signature blue and black one.

_Go back. Kill them all._

“No!” Ryan scoffed. “I’m not killing anyone. I’m _retiring_.”

The voice laughed, loud and sharp and it stabbed a pain behind Ryan’s right eye. _Retire? Boy, you’ve only just begun. Or did you forget the power you’ve been given?_

Ryan stole a lungful of air, considering for a moment. “Did you come from that weird little… black thing?”

The response was resounding, a choir of Devils all hissing together; _The Black Segment._ Ryan winced and plugged an ear with his palm but that didn’t help. The overbearing agony pressed like a needle into his skull.

“That would be a yes,” he seethed.

_You released us from our prison and we made you our home._

“I don’t appreciate that,” he mumbled, but if the voices were talking, then he might as well talk back. “So, there’s more than one of you. Do you have names or should I just be calling you The Voices? Oh, can _I_ name you?”

A beat, and Ryan had the distinct feeling that it was grinning. _They_ were grinning. _We are called---_ followed by an indistinguishable noise that burned itself into his brain. His tongue would never be able to pronounce that.

Ryan _tsk_ ed, wincing from that damnening pain behind his eye. It took all he had to keep his stance straight. “Ah, yeah, I’m not gonna be able to work with that,” he said. “I’m going to name you Edgar.” A pause. “You are _all_ Edgar.”

The Edgars seemed a tad thrown off, indistinct whispers as if they needed to chat with each other first before deciding whether or not it was a suitable name. Then one said, _What does that name mean in your language?_

“Hell if I know,” Ryan snapped. “It’s just a name. It’s better than… Aglabahaga.” That damn noise again and he pressed two fingers against his eyebrow again. “Stop. That _hurts_.”

_So, you will go back and free your city from the one called Trevor?_

“Well…” Ryan pinched his lips back, tilting his head to one side. “Can I do more than just tell people what to do? Can you teach me how to do that… anti-light thing?”

 _A million things,_ one Edgar, the _main_ Edgar, promised. _There is nothing in this world that cannot be yours._

“Then I take it you want something in return.”

_Of course._

Ryan felt his stomach turn to lead and drop to his shoes. “If you say my soul, the whole deal is off.”

_No. We have no use for odd human concepts such as that._

Ryan’s stomach made it back up to his knees at least but it was quite disappointing to find out souls were a ‘human-only’ thing. “Okay?”

_There is a man who must be saved, a man who must be killed, and a man who must be avenged. Do these things and we will help you take back what is rightfully yours and even more._

Ryan raised his eyebrows at the ‘even more’ part. “And how do I find these three wise men?” he asked.

 _Three foolish men,_ and the voices collectively all laughed together as if it was a joke Ryan was supposed to get. He humoured them anyway with a forced chuckle until they stopped (which was after an awkwardly long time). _But you have met one already. Michael Burns._

“Oh, good, a second chance.”

_And when you find him, you will find the others._

“And the only way to find Burns is to find Trevor,” Ryan said. “So it would seem we have a commonality in our favour.”

_More than you realise._

“Fine. But on one condition.” The Edgars mumbled and Ryan continued. “Please stop telling me to kill innocent people when I’m trying to do things.”

_It would be faster and your memory suggests you’ve done it before._

“Stay out of my memories!”

Edgar grumbled. _They’re fun to watch_ . A beat, then they snapped, _Fine._ and Ryan was content with that.

He rolled his shoulders back, cracked his neck one side and then the other. “Then, in that case,” The wind buffeted again, this time against his back. North Pidd was suddenly less welcoming, cowering in the long shadow he cast. “we better get to work.”


	7. Jeremy: Rimmy Tim, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt entrusts Jeremy with an incredible secret. Then, a mysterious note shows up on Matt's doorstep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This probably should've gone through another round of editing before I published this, but eh. I'm tired and I want to go to bed.
> 
> Also, thanks to all those who have been supporting me thus far in my story! I didn't expect it to take as well as it did, but the support has been super helpful in getting my ass in gear and keeping me on a steady schedule. Now the pressure is on to make this a good one.
> 
> (Also, is it bad I have ideas to make this a whole expanded universe? I know we're on chapter 7 but it feels like the story hasn't even started yet...)
> 
> EDIT: Removed a word I did not realise was a bad word. Whoops. MASSIVE apologies on that one.  
> EDIT 2: I realised that this chapter is actually out of order from the rest and that's an oops on my part because I wasn't keeping track of the timeline correctly. Double whoops.

_Jeremy Dooley, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
The Night of the Robbery_

Matt’s hideaway was some rundown apartment in Farthenfur. Jeremy had only ever seen it from the outside but this time, he’d received a text message to meet Matt in the lobby.

He pulled up on his motorcycle and parked it as close as he could to the door without being in handicap parking. Purple underglow turned yellow parking lines lime green. He shut off the ignition and rounded a kick off the bike, then stood for a moment, peering up at the grey building in the darkening sky. Another cloudy day, but that was to be expected when a city was built on an island.

Jeremy tapped on the brim of his ridge top and began for the door.

The apartment lobby was barely a room, less than two metres wide and four metres long with a glass door on the other side. The white walls were stained by dust and water. A single red loveseat sagged against the wall to the right. Jeremy eyed a panel of buttons on the left but he wasn’t given a number to press so he was forced to wait for Matt. He took a seat on the waiting chair, pulled out his phone, and shot out a single word text.

Then he leaned forward onto his knees and waited.

Less than ten minutes later, the interior door opened and Matt stood in the doorway. His hair was pulled back into a bun though a few scraggled pieces still dangled around his face. His red hoodie sat tied at the waist, revealing a stained white t-shirt underneath. “C’mon,” he said.

“Hello to you, too,” Jeremy scoffed, standing and following Matt through the lobby door. “What’s up?”

“Not here,” Matt snapped and Jeremy recoiled with only a fluttered blink.

The elevator ride was a long and quiet ride. The single bare light flickered every time they passed a floor and it didn’t even ding when it got their stop. The only company in the hallway was their muted footsteps on soft cream-coloured carpet. Matt guided him down a labyrinth of halls, pulling out his keys when they got close.

Matt fiddled with the lock and Jeremy flickered his eyes to the room number; 804. He peered up and down the off-white hall, picking up the sounds of an angry woman screaming obscenities at (probably) her husband in a foreign language.

Finally, the door opened and he ushered in with Jeremy close behind him. The room was as bad as the rest of the apartment but the items it held were far from dejected. Neon lights and glowing things, modern furniture in dark colours, a sophisticated sound system, a TV as wide as Jeremy’s motorcycle. On it was the Pause Screen of some sandbox video game. At the very back of the living room was a dark wood desk with a thousand different small screws and bolts and parts. Something glinted and flickered on the far left.

There was a box on the centre of the desk and it pulled excitement out of Jeremy’s frustration.

Matt shut the door and locked it seven different ways before he could relax enough to remove his shoes. Jeremy mirrored him, then stood awkwardly at the door while Matt made his way to the living room. “Can I talk now?”

Matt said nothing and instead pressed a button on his sound system. Aggressive guitar and a bass that tingled under the soles of Jeremy’s feet pumped out of the speakers. “ _Now_ you may speak.”

“Nice pad,” Jeremy said, crossing to the vinyl sofa and plopping down onto it. “You’ve been hiding _this_ from me the whole time?”

“Some people are dicks and if they find out you have nice stuff, they usually steal it. Or pretend to be your friend to use it.” Matt shrugged. “Usually the first thing.”

“What?” Jeremy gasped, voice soaking in sarcasm. “People _pretend_ to be your friend? _No._ ” Matt shot Jeremy a look and Jeremy smirked. “I’m joking, Matt.”

Matt scoffed. “Well, the feeling’s mutual.”

“Hey, I have friends!”

“Really? Who?”

A beat. “Well, I got you.”

Matt laughed and Jeremy made a face. “You need to get out more. I don’t have friends by choice. What’s your excuse?”

“In my line of work, there are no friends. Just allies and competitors.”

Matt gestured widely. “You’re a delivery boy! Get over yourself!”

“Hey! I am the _best_ damn delivery boy and I resent that!”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

Jeremy scowled but Matt looked away, turning his attention back to the desk. Deflated, Jeremy rested back against the couch, kicking an ankle onto his knee and hoisting an arm along the back. “So, what did you call me here for? Has to be important if you let me in your house.”

“Not my house,” Matt corrected. “Actually, I invited you in because I, for some God beyond reason, consider you a friend. Also, because I’m about to entrust you with some pretty crazy shit --- and if I can’t trust you with my place, I couldn’t trust you with this.”

“Okay. So, what’s ‘this’?”

Matt answered by picking up that giant case and setting it down on the coffee table in front of Jeremy. He unfolded his legs and leaned up, eyebrows furrowing, eyes narrowing. “My dear delivery boy, you must know by now I am an inventor.” He unclicked the case and folded it back to reveal an orange gun with purple highlights. This wasn’t just any invention --- Matt made this with _him_ in mind.

Jeremy reached out and delicately picked up the gun, jaw agape by the sheer rounded slickness of the barrel, a soft padded grip, a trigger with a fingerprint sensor. He rotated it in his hands, stunned into silence. The neon lights glinted off its edges. He noticed that below the handle, there was no place to put a clip. His eyes darted up to Matt quizzically but he caught himself first. “This is amazing. You… made this for me?”

“Not at first,” Matt admitted. “But while I was making it, I couldn’t think of anyone else who could use it.” He rounded the coffee table and joined next to Jeremy, pointing to the top of the gun, a clear window where cogs and gears turned. “This is an energy pistol. Something of an... environmentally-friendly gun, but with a bigger, badder punch. Guns were lethal to start with, but this will kick a whole new kind of teeth in.”

The question escaped his lips before he could think; “Why?”

Matt shrugged. “Well, honestly, I don’t know. Actually, I _do_ know.” He breathed through grit teeth, shaking his head. “It’s kind of complicated.” He paused, stood, then rounded the table again. “Do you want something to drink? Whiskey, maybe?”

“Please.”

“Just gimme a sec.” Matt disappeared into the kitchen, the entrance hidden beside the front door. Jeremy stole that moment to overlook the gun again, aiming at the TV set to test the grip. Matt came back into the room with a bottle of whiskey and two red Solo cups and nearly jumped ten feet in the air. “Don’t point that at my TV, Jeremy!”

Jeremy lowered his aim and then put the gun back into the case. “Sorry.”

“Damn, I leave you in the room for ten seconds…” Matt set down the cups and poured straight whiskey into them. Jeremy noted the ice at the bottom when he went to swig his drink immediately. “Alright.” Matt sat back down next to Jeremy, taking his own cup for himself. “What was the question?”

“Why?”

Matt nodded. “Right!” He stole a sip, then settled into the couch. “So, I build a lotta shit for a lotta people,” he explained. “People tell me what they need done, I build something that can get the job done, you bring them the thing I made. You get paid, I get paid, it’s great. But lately, I’ve been trying to… _expand_ my horizons.”

“So you made me a sick ass pistol?”

“No, I designed an energy-efficient killing machine and then decided that if I trusted anyone to test it, it would be you. So, I had it specially tailored to your stupid ass aesthetic.”

Jeremy made a face but nodded, then took a sip of his whiskey. It had a bubbly sweet burn, clearing his sinuses and numbing his gums. It went down warm and sticky. “At the risk of sounding self-centred,” he said. “Why _me_?”

“Have you ever killed a man?”

“God, no.”

“Stolen anything?”

“Just from the guy who swindled me that one time.”

“Hurt an innocent?”

“Do geese count?”

“Not in this case, but that's totally illegal in Canada.”

“Then no!” Matt gestured as if the answer should be obvious. Jeremy gestured like it wasn’t. “Being a decent human being does not warrant being entrusted with… _this_!”

“Well, being a decent human being, you’re the best person I know.” A beat, a famously pointed look from Matt. “ _Morally_ best.”

Jeremy ducked his head into his cup. “Couldn’t let my head get too big,” he mumbled.

“Of course not.” Matt gestured to the gun. “But, if you’re willing, I have plenty more where that came from.”

“Uh, yeah!” Jeremy shot upwards like a bullet, setting down his whiskey before he spilled it in his excitement. “I still don’t get it but I’m game.”

Matt smiled. “I knew you would.”

“Not get it or still be for it?”

“Both.” Matt set down his own drink, choosing to stand then. All those times he got up and sat down again made Jeremy’s legs feel all wobbly as if he were the one doing all the moving. “The gun’s yours,” Matt continued, snatching something off his desk again. “Whenever you get around to testing it, record your results on this.”

He handed Jeremy nothing less than a stick with five buttons, a speaker, and a hole at the top. It was shiny black and smaller than his palm and had only a slot for a micro SD card. Jeremy clicked the record button and held it up to his lips. “One, two, three. Testing, one, two, three.” He held it out, played it back, heard his voice reutter the same words. Content, he shoved it in his pocket. “Can do. What should I be saying? Fired an energy bullet and killed a guy, or…?”

Matt hummed thoughtfully, tapping a finger against his chin. “Talk more about the gun itself than what you do with it. Like, if it makes any weird clicking noises or if you think the recoil needs work. Maybe the gun fires backwards. I dunno.”

“All of those things sound dangerous, but I got it.” Jeremy reached under his purple denim jacket and pulled out his standard pistol, replacing it with the new, shinier, scarier one. “Uh, when should I expect other toys?”

“Not long,” Matt answered. “I wanted to make sure I could keep a steady stream of tools coming at you before I suggested a deal.”

“Awesome.”

“One more thing.” The violet neon light darkened Matt’s face, his eyes narrowing on Jeremy. “Do not tell _anyone_ where you got this from. Absolutely _no one_.”

Jeremy’s casualness didn’t match Matt’s serious tone; “Yeah, can do. Not like I got anyone to tell, anyway.”

“Do not even breathe my name to anyone.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Not a single person can---”

“I get it!” Jeremy threw his arms in the air. “As far as the world knows, you and I are just business guys who meet outside a creepy apartment building and are _definitely not_ experimenting with crazy and probably very deadly weapons. Understood.”

Matt pursed his lips together but didn’t press. Instead, he straightened his back, plucking his drink up off the table as he did so. “So, now that _that_ ’s settled…” He chugged back the remainder of his drink, smacking his lips with a satisfied sigh. “You’re welcome to stay and chill out if you want. Or, if you’re excited, you can hit the streets and see what that baby can do.”

For a long moment, Jeremy considered his options. Then, his eyes fell to his drink and his lips pulled back into a smile. “Why not both?”

***~ &&&~***

He did not do both.

Jeremy woke half-snore, startling himself awake. Pulling his eyelids apart was a chore, eyelashes tugging on each other no different from women yanking each other’s hair in a catfight. He peeled his face from the plastic couch, groaning when his skin stuck to the vinyl and needed to be pulled away with an unfortunate tug. Drool pooled under his head. He reached up with a disgusted hand and wiped the saliva that had soaked his right cheek. His jacket laid over him, an impromptu blanket. His hat was tipped upside down on the coffee table.

The world spun one way and his stomach the other. A jackhammer chugged away at his eyeballs, over and over. Jeremy dropped his face back against the couch again, wrinkling his nose when the slime was cold. Eyes fluttered shut, but he didn’t sleep.

An hour passed before Jeremy found the strength to stand and stumble to the washroom. He passed Matt’s bedroom door, resounding snoring crawling through. A moment in the bathroom, then emerged, drying his hands on his jeans. He waddled to the kitchen to either find bread to shove into his gullet or maybe a massive jug of warm water or…

He poured himself a glass of water from the tap, chugged it back, filled another, and chugged that back, too. The pounding didn’t subside but the sickness did. Maybe a few more minutes of wakefulness would shake the hangover from his eyes. He filled the cup a final time and took to pacing aimlessly around Matt’s apartment.

In the morning light with the neon lights all turned off, it seemed more like a workshop with video games than a home. He didn’t peer into Matt’s bedroom, but he had a feeling that all in there was perhaps a bed and a side table.

Knock, knock.

Jeremy whipped around to the front door, coldness running across his entire body, inhale hitched mid breath. He remained frozen, watching the door with wide, baggy eyes. The knock didn’t come again: Instead, a note slipped under the door. He didn’t hear anyone leave, which made him purse his lips and squint but he didn’t dare chase the visitor.

He approached the door, knelt down to examine the note. It was sealed in a gold envelope, a cursive V hand-painted on the front and a black skull-shaped seal on the back. Jeremy’s heart leaped into his throat, desperately trying not to crumple the paper in his gloved hands.

He threw the letter aside and unlocked Matt’s seven locks before bursting out of the apartment. He sprinted down the maze of halls, becoming lost on occasion. Then two metal doors came into view and relief washed him.

He wasn’t able to stop himself and he slammed into the elevator doors with a resounding bang. Jeremy stumbled backward into the opposing wall, lifting a hand to catch himself before the hangover knocked his legs out from under him. His eyes flashed up to the floor numbers, watching them light up in reverse. Five, four, three...

Jeremy pushed himself off the wall and went for the stairs.

Three times Jeremy almost fell but each time, he steadied himself with the hand railing, fumbling over himself like an idiot and running into walls.

He made it to the ground floor. His legs were weak and shaky. Sand could have formed in his mouth, his throat. He couldn’t make feeling of his tongue. He looked up at the elevator, barely catching the Floor One lit up in faded city yellow.

He pushed himself out the front door into the cloudless morning.

Tires squealed around a corner, a white hatchback sped out of the parking lot. Jeremy watched it for half a second, then patted his pockets. Keys. Wallet. No phone. Fuck.

He pursed his lips then darted for his motorcycle. He’d come back for it later. “You ain’t doin’ this to me, again, Vagabond,” Jeremy cursed as his bike came to life. He pressed a hand against his ribs and felt the killing machine in his holster. With a deep breath, he pushed the bike backward and took off after the hatchback.

It only took him five minutes to catch up, even after several fears of losing the vehicle almost threw him off their track. Jeremy was bright and clear as day, purple and orange lights faded but still obvious in the bright sun. The hatchback jerked to the side and sped up, winding around cars and running red lights.

He was scared. Jeremy pulled back a grin. _The Vagabond_ was _scared_.

Jeremy’s eyes flickered to the license plate, flaking and barely readable: BRHK974. He fuddled for his phone before he remembered he didn’t have it and he slid a curse. “Damn!” He’d have to commit it to memory. BRKH sounded like Burk from How to Train Your Dragon (The only damn movie Jeremy ever saw). And 974, 1974, that’s a year stuff happened, probably. Jeremy winced at his own lack of history knowledge --- and also at the pounding migraine scolding him for drinking so much last night. He decided to repeat Burk 1974 in his mind over and over, drawing the killing machine from his shoulder holster. He aimed, training an eye down its sights --- until the hatchback slammed on its breaks and took a hard right.

Disadvantaged with a foggy mind, Jeremy turned the motorcycle but forgot the brakes and the whole vehicle skidded sideways, wheels first. Jeremy yelped, trying to turn his handles, slam the brakes, and hit the gas all at the same time. The wheels abruptly stopped but everything else kept moving. Jeremy was bucked sideways off the motorcycle and the ground came up fast.

White pain just above his left ear, scraping flesh off his cheek against the ground. Orange flipped over him, eclipsing the sun for half a second, and landed on the other side of his body. The bike crunched and slid into a brick wall.

Dust settled.

For a long moment, Jeremy laid on his back, staring up at the pale blue sky. “Ow.” A car pulled up beside him and beeped twice. Insulted, he lifted his head and swung enough of a fist to make a thud sound off the car bumper. He struggled to his feet, hopping half a step, flipped off the driver, then limped off the road to his motorcycle.

The city continued to bustle around him like he didn’t just wipe out in the middle of the intersection.

Jeremy sighed.

The bike had a bent out front wheel and several scrapes in the body. It wasn’t destroyed but he wouldn’t be able to do much with it right now.

He picked it up, repeating Burk 1974 in his head over and over until he found an empty parking spot to leave his bike for the time being. He tipped his hat to the vehicle then turned on his heel back towards Matt’s apartment.

The walk was long and unfairly achey. Glass buildings blended into the sky’s threateningly grey, heartless and cowardly. Distant rumbles of tropical storms made the ground quiver. No rain yet, but soon enough.

Orange street lights were flickering, undecided whether it was time to light the night or sleep for the day. They loomed but guided, never moving but always watching.

“Stop.”

Jeremy stopped. He itched to turn and face the man but his body wouldn’t respond. His hungover brain barely wanted to make him move. He was one part paralysed and four parts willingly obedient. Confusion and terror bloomed like little flowers; delicate, whimsical, and easy to miss.

The man rounded him, looking him over curiously and Jeremy felt a snap comment get stuck in his throat. Anxiety crawled up from the depths of his chest, but even that was stuck just behind his expression. Then the man picked up his hat --- how _dare_ that _fuck_ take his _damn hat_! Jeremy struggled against his own body but no muscle responded and he was forced to resign to his situation.

Instead, he watched the man on the corner of his eye. White, short blond hair that swept down and back on either side; stubble all along the jaw and around the mouth. His nose was ever so slightly crooked at the bridge and his forehead was big enough for Jeremy’s whole left hand and half of the right to press flat against it. That, and Burk 1974 was burned into his memory.

When the guy gave up on playing with his hat, he wished him a better day and fucked off.

Jeremy’s muscles released and his legs buckled out from underneath him. He had half a mind to shoot the guy but he instead let himself remember that man commanded him to stop and Jeremy _stopped_.

For a long time, Jeremy sat on his knees in the middle of the sidewalk, trying to collect his thoughts. That wasn’t normal, he thought. That wasn’t normal at all.

He forced himself to stand and stagger back to Matt’s apartment, hungover, aching, and scared absolutely shitless.


	8. Michael: With Friends Like These

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael discovers he has a million-dollar bounty on his head. He discovers a strange sword while on the run from his pursuers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Severe Drowning Trigger Warning and implied torture trigger warning ahead. Read with caution.

_Michael Jones, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
_ _The Night After the Robbery_

“C’mon, Jonesy,” Garboski sang, which was kind of creepy and not appreciated. Michael pressed his back against the brick wall and shivered. Misty rain tickled his nose and fiddled with the curls of his hair. Puddle water soaked into his shitty running shoes, but that was the least of his problems. He rolled his head backward and squeezed his eyes shut. Great. Just fucking great. “Where ya goin’, man?”

“Fuckin’ _nowhere_ , apparently,” he hissed, pulling his head back up. His gaze flickered between Garboski’s two friends before he landed on the head honcho himself. “The fuck you want, Garboski? I got shit to do.”

Garboski brandished a knife, serrated and silver, and jerked it at Michael’s face. Michael’s eyes narrowed on the blade and he scrunched his nose in disdain. “Listen, man,” Garboski began, turning the knife away for a brief second. “This isn’t personal. Boss sent me. This is all from him.”

“The fuck are you talkin’ about?”

Garboski’s smirk twisted into a grin that made Michael’s stomach drop. “You took his girl and he’s pissed.”

A beat. Michael swallowed, then smiled. “Well, yeah, I did do that,” he snorted. One of Garboski’s friends chuckled with him. “But for the record, she left him on her own --- and I never touched her while they were dating. She’s not like that.” He shrugged apologetically. “Dude, their break up literally got _nothin’_ to do with me.”

“That doesn’t change the name of the game, Jonesy,” Garboski said. “He wants us to kill you. But I’m willing to let you go if you can pay more than the bounty he’s got on your head.”

A breeze pushed through the narrow way, nudging Michael towards the main street. Cars whipped by, throwing rainwater onto the sidewalk from spinning wheels. Michael balled his fingers into white-knuckle fists, narrowing his gaze dangerously at them. “Bounty?”

“A million.”

Cold numbness shot up Michael’s spine. In his disbelief, he laughed. “For his _girl_? Fuck, we’re not even together anymore. Shit barely lasted three weeks.”

Garboski shrugged. “Don’t matter.”

Michael drew a deep, long sigh. “This is fucking stupid,” he whispered, rubbing his hand over his mouth. Dread clawed at his throat. “This is so _fucking_ stupid. A whole mil. Geezus Christ. For a _girl_.”

“You made him look like an idiot,” Garboski continued. “His girl left him for some low-ass punk? She’d give up money and status to be with _you_ ? He wants you _dead_ , man.” Garboski opened his arms. “And he’s gonna pay us some _damn_ good money for your head.”

Michael drew in a deep breath, balling his fists at his sides, this time with enough control that he did not cut his palms with his fingernails. “Yeah, he can want me dead all he likes, but it’s _your dick_ he’s gonna get in the mail.”

Before Garboski could figure out it was a threat, Michael punched him in the face and felt a satisfying crack under his knuckles. Garboski screamed like a girl and fell into a fleet of garbage bags behind him. Michael barked a laugh, then kicked his friend in the nuts, pushed him aside, and booked it out of the alleyway into the main street again.

The small droplets of rain pelted his face, rushing wind deafening him and making it hurt. The neon lights of Achievement City paved his way down the bustling sidewalk. He weaved between people and shoved aside those he couldn’t make it around. He sprinted passed a coffee shop, a massage therapist, a closed-down science centre. Behind him, yelling; “Get back here, Jonesy! You’re dead meat!”

Michael spun down a new street, stumbling when his shoes slipped in the rain, catching himself when he found friction again. A silver Audi parked on the roadside slid into view, as he expected. He shoved a hand into his pocket, produced a set of keys, fumbled with the unlock button on the FOB. He slid over the hood of the car to the driver's side door --- nearly bucked off the hood by the slip of the rain --- and scrambled into the front seat.

In his rearview mirror, Garboski and his friends were screaming for him to stop. Garboski slammed into the trunk of the vehicle and yanked on the back door handle as Michael turned the ignition. A pulled back an elbow smashed into his car window, cracking a sizeable hole into the passenger side window. He reached for the lock but Michael pulled into traffic without looking and spun out his tires screeching down the street.

He dragged Garboski’s elbow with him for a while until he freed himself and Michael whooped the entire time.

They scrambled in his rearview mirror but they were mere dots before Michael could figure out what their plan was. He shook his head, grinning, chuckling to himself.

A beat. Another. Michael’s smile started to fade.

He swallowed the last of the spit his mouth would produce and this reduced his mouth to sand. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, massaging his neck, running fingers through his hair. Reality was settling in. “A mil,” he whispered to himself. “A whole fuckin' mil. Son of a bitch.” Breath in. “Son of a _whore_ .” Breath out. He slammed the palm of his hand against the steering wheel. “Fuck!” A slam for every word; “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_!” He punched the horn. “ _Fuuuck_!”

People stared at the Audi as it zipped by, at least forty miles over the speed limit. Michael gasped for air as ice ran in chunks into his blood. He gripped the steering wheel tight. “Okay,” he said, exhaling sharply through tight lips. “Okay. Guess it’s time to blow this town.” He reached down and clicked on the stereo, turning the music to full blast. He wouldn’t have time to make it home to get his stuff, but he didn’t own much anyway.

Michael settled back into his seat, staring off at the road ahead of him. Time to move on.

As the Audi pulled through the intersection, a car slammed into the right side, T-boned him, sent him and his car skidding down the road sideways. Michael screamed, slamming his head into the driver's window, scrambling to turn the vehicle straight before it spun out of control. The Audi skidded to a stop in the middle of the street.

Michael peeled his head off the window, sticky blood running down his temple. The world danced, a twirling ballerina at her last performance. Shards of glass cut his fingers, his cheeks, his bare arms. Everything ached. He reached for the handle of the door, pushing it open with a heave, falling out of his Audi when he unclicked the seatbelt.

For a moment, he laid on the asphalt, catching his breath, letting the world spin for a little while before pushing himself off the ground and stumbling down the road. The crash stunned the driver of the other car; they weren’t following him yet.

He found his target; a poor biker on a blue bicycle. He shoved the guy off his bike, mounted it himself, and took off down the road again. The car behind him revved and sped after him. Michael looked over his shoulder, growled, then turned his attention forward again.

The neon lights were fading as Michael came onto the highway. He ignored a Road Closed sign and peddled as hard he could manage. He turned upwards over the highway bridge and stuck close to the medium so the driver would think twice about ramming into him.

Behind him, the engine roared, tires squealed, and Michael gasped for air, his legs burning from pedaling uphill. He didn’t want to look behind him. He set his sights on the end of the bridge. Construction, they were building a raised bridge. Michael ground his teeth and pedaled harder, but the car caught up.

It slammed into the back of his bike, catching the back wheel, bending the spokes.

He yelled and fell backward onto the car’s windshield, the weight of his body shattering the glass. He grasped at the metal hood to keep himself from sliding forward, off the hood, underneath the tires.

Then the car went off the bridge.

Down, down, Michael expected the car to land on him. Instead, he launched forward and the car nose-dived into the ground with a resounding smash and exploded into a million plastic pieces. Michael skid across the gravel, rolling until he hit a concrete bridge leg and stopped.

The car held for a moment then tilted downward and landed on its roof.

Silence.

The dust began to settle. The headlights of the car blinked out. The engine died. Seagulls cried.

Stillness.

A long moment.

Then Michael groaned.

He pushed himself up again. His entire body was on fire, but he stood anyway, catching himself before he stumbled. No way that person survived. Then again, he shouldn’t have survived, either.

He took a sigh of relief, pressing his back against the concrete pillar.

The air tasted like dust and salt, the faint washing of waves against the shore. He looked to his right, a concrete border that kept vehicles from spilling into the rocky waters of Achievement Cove. The rainy night persuaded waves to crash against the shore, wilder than usual and spraying droplets onto the gravel road. A trail of blood followed from under a nearby truck into an abandoned warehouse. 

Michael looked forward again. He shut his eyes.

A growing light interrupted his self-inflicted darkness.

Three more cars pulled up the scene. Michael grunted and forced himself to stand up alone, swaying and letting his arms lay limp at his sides. He could barely keep his head up. He stepped backward, squinting at the brightness. People got out of the cars and became silhouettes in the headlights. He didn’t need to see their faces to imagine the shit-eating grin they were wearing.

“Listen,” Garboski said. “I gave you a chance to save yourself and you threw it back in my face. But, Jonesy, we’ve been friends awhile. So, here, a gift of a painless death.” He lifted his arm, pointed a barrel at him. “From me to you.”

He fired.

Michael leaped to the side, ducking behind the pillar, following the trail of blood towards the warehouse. Dust exploded into silver specks, dusting the blood trail and melding with the rain. More bullets, collecting yelling, ordering, Michael sprinted into the warehouse and slammed the door behind him. He grabbed whatever he could and threw it in front of the door, then backed away only to realise there were windows. Bullets shattered the glass and Michael threw up his arms to defend himself from shards of glass. The soles of his shoes failed to bite on the slippery concrete and he gracelessly slammed against the ground.

That was when he found the sword.

In the streetlight that poured through the bullet holes, it glinted and shone and glowed from under the table it was hidden. It was sleek, enchanting, _begging_ for blood. When he reached for the hilt, he had expected it to be warm but the wrapping was as cold as the concrete ground. “ _Hello_ , beautiful.”

He gripped the handle in his hand, heavy and light, balanced but tilting. Michael stood and limped between two lines of tables, around one table that was pulled out of place, towards the back of the warehouse. The sword dragged behind him.

He slammed his shoulder into a door. It swung open with a mighty heave and Michael stumbled face-first into a dumpster. His ribs slammed against the edge and he groaned, pushing himself off and walked backward until he hit the metal wall of the warehouse.

He brandished the sword in his hands like a baseball bat, spinning it in his hands as he neared the edge of the wall.

One of Garboski’s friends rounded the corner and Michael heaved the sword up, aiming for the head. The guy ducked but Michael still had enough footing to kick him down, followed by the blade coming back around to dig deep into his arm. The man dropped the gun and clamoured to his injured arm, crying in pain.

Michael stepped out from behind the wall. Another gunshot and the bullet bounced off his blade. He stepped back behind the warehouse again, then realised what had happened.

“Oh. Fuck yeah.”

He lifted the sword in front of him and grinned. He peered around the corner; Garboski’s other friend has his gun trained for the first sight of movement and Michael moved in time to avoid a bullet to the head. Maybe not that way.

He spun and ran across the warehouse front until he reached the other side. He hesitated at the corner, took a breath, then round the corner. He lifted his sword, ready to swing at the first thing he saw.

It was a gun.

Downwards on the barrel that wasn’t quite ready to shoot, and he dug the blade into the shoulder of some guy Garboski hired. He screamed and collapsed, and Michael had to kick the guy to free his weapon from the body.

Slam! White, ringing agony as something rammed against the back of his head. The force sent him stumbling forward, never able to regain balance. Michael dropped. The sword skidded off somewhere to his right.

Garboski threw the rebar to the side and stood over Michael as he twisted onto his back to witness his attacker. Light and shadow blended together, colours blurring in streaks, nothing sharp. He seethed, baring his teeth in a painful smile. “Fucker,” he groaned.

“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, Jonesy.” Garboski pushed his fist into his hand and cracked his knuckles. “You never were one to know his place, were you?” Michael sighed and let his head fall back against the gravel, trying to break his chest with heaves of breath. Above him, beyond the bridge above him, seagulls screamed and circled in the air above him. “You’re going to make me a very rich man.” Garboski’s other friend came up from behind him to show him the blue sword. Garboski smiled, taking the weapon and holding it to the air. “A souvenir,” he said. “To commemorate your death.”

Michael filled his lungs, felt his heart slam against his chest, --- “You talk too much.” --- then pushed himself forward, rolling, going right for Garboski’s stomach. He tackled him against the warehouse wall and Garboski released the sword.

Michael grabbed the hilt and, against his better judgment, threw the sword as hard as he could over the Cove. It spun, spun through the air in a long arc and splashed into the sea below. He whipped around with a fist and nailed Garboski in the face once more before his friend leaped on him, pulled him off, and threw him back down again.

Michael rolled backward over his shoulder back onto his---

White pain flashed across his eyes, all his head injuries pulsing shockwaves through his brain. He stumbled and collapsed to a knee, adrenaline falling back. His blood became slush. He fought to keep his eyes open, let alone make sense of what he could see in front of him.

Garboski’s friend snatched the rebar off the ground.

“Rude,” Garboski scoffed.

“You’re not gonna get the last word,” Michael snapped, an arrogant chortle escaping through his nose. “You can try, but you’re not gonna get the last word.”

Garboski grinned like Michael had called a forfeit. Maybe he had. The guy with the cut arm finally joined them at the warehouse side, scowling like a cat who’d been dunked in water. Garboski noted him, then turned back to Michael. “I wonder,” he began slowly. “If someone can swim with both their arms broken.”

Michael’s heart flipped, turned to stone, and sank, leaving a cold trail all the way down to his belly. The air was filled with razors, cutting down his esophagus into his lungs --- and then cutting those apart, too. When he scrapped the mounds of fear on his tone, he only found more sarcasm underneath. “Why? Just shoot me and get this over with.”

“No, that boat sailed a _long_ time ago. The only thing you’ve been doing is putting off your demise,” Garboski said. “If you wanna put it off so much, then _let’s_.”

“ _Demise_ , huh?” Michael scoffed, narrowing an arrogant eye. “Garboski, have you been _reading_?”

Garboski half-laughed, snatching the rebar from his friend. All of Michael tensed, swallowing cotton, flickering his eyes between Garboski and four other guys. He pursed his lips, shook his head, but balled his fists and stood. Garboski rested the rebar on his shoulder. “Goodnight, Jonesy,” he said.

***~ &&&~***

Michael didn’t scream.

He fell, fell, fell into the jagged tide below.

The surface of the water slammed into his face. Cold, harsh, _agonizing_ existence washed over him. His brain slugged to keep up with all the messages of pain, overwhelmed and shutting down and fighting and dying.

He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t see.

All sound disappeared in the muffled crashing of the sea. He held his breath, trying to summon the strength to struggle against the tide and swim back up towards the surface with only the kicking of his feet. The water thrashed him back and forth like a dog with a ragdoll, slamming him against the jagged rocks once, twice, breaking another bone, bruising his back and his neck, lacerating whatever skin was exposed to the water.

Then it pulled him out into the bleak eternity of the ocean. It tugged and tore at his clothes, his hair, his limbs, both his fine and broken ones.

He opened his eyes.

Blue.

A faint blue glow far ahead of him, hidden by the murk of the Cove. Against himself, he released the breath he had been holding. Bubbles rose. He sank. His body lurched to breathe again, but instead of air, he found only water in his lungs.

Water lit his lungs aflame, salt scratching like a beast trying to escape his rib cage. He clawed at his chest with one hand, trying to rip his body apart to make room for air.

He fought against fate, clinging to hope with every ounce of will he had. He tried to scramble towards the surface, but his muscles screamed and his body failed and his soul was trying so desperately to climb out of his body to fresh air. The waves pulled him back until his legs tangled in the undertow. It yanked him downwards. He tried to scream but nothing came out.

Even if he could breathe, he probably wouldn’t make a sound.

The pulling ceased and so did the will to fight. The deep of the sea was calmer, colder, almost black. The water rocked him, apologising, regretful. The glowing blue light pulsed, the heart of the ocean.

Desperate, Michael stretched his fingers into the darkness, barely able to feel them as they reached again for the blue light. He was beckoned by a silent siren’s song, one that buzzed in his chest and beat with his heart. Warm, enchanting, and begging for blood.

It faded.

His heart grew tired of beating, unable to maintain all the work of operating his body. The pain faded. Cold seeped into bone, freezing his bone marrow and turning his blood to slush. A steady calmness, peace, both intense and soft filled his stomach, his lungs, his head.

He was alone.

His eyes wouldn’t shut.

Michael floated in the endlessness until everything faded.

***~ &&&~***

Wet, sticky, rough rubbed up against his cheeks, his nose, his eyes.

Michael groaned, craning his face away from the thing but it persisted and he grew annoyed of it enough that it pulled him from a dreamless sleep. He didn’t open his eyes, at first attempting to reach up until he felt burning pain scald from his wrist to his elbow and he, despite himself, whimpered.

Memories were a black and red and dark blue blur. They melded together and produced only a single bit of information in the form of body-wide agony.

It licked his face again, drawing him from thinking too much. A dog, he concluded.

Michael took a deep, burning breath and opened his eyes.

That was _not_ a dog.

His breath hitched, trying to will his broken body to move away from the nine-foot long brown bear. He couldn’t get his voice above a whisper: “Holy shit, holy shit, _holy shit_.” The bear stared at him, watching him with big brown eyes. Michael couldn’t look away, lying helpless in front of a strength even he knew not to mess with.

The bear huffed, turned, and ambled away into the forest line behind him. When the panic subsided, Michael finally had a chance to gather his bearings.

The morning sun hung over the ocean, rosey orange and yellow. The gentle, timid tide lapped at the shore, waves like applause and apologies. The forest behind him was dense with thick-trunked trees. This was the East Hoboken Conservation Area.

Body check. He couldn’t move. Not like he was paralyzed but more like he didn’t want to move. Numbness threatened a certain amount of pain he didn’t want to deal with. It also told him one arm was hurt less than the other. Garboski was garbo at decent torture. Give him a three out of ten. He’d had better.

“How…?” His voice, hoarse from salt and water, trailed off when he spoke.

Without a missing beat, the bear returned from the forest and Michael’s jaw dropped then noticed what it carried in its mouth; the crystalline sword.

It didn’t get any closer than a few meters. It lowered its head, dropped the blade onto the rocky shore, then walked back between the trees again. The weapon shined a familiar sky blue haze in the orange light of the sun. Michael crawled, weak and tired, kicking off the wobbly rocks and push himself up the shore to the sword as it laid across the rock. He dragged himself with his better hand (his left), wincing and whining with every protest of his body. The million injuries and bruises and the wound on his head and both his arms were struck by lightning, flashing across his entire body in sharp, pulsing waves.

With his left hand, he reached for the handle, wrapping his fingers tight around it. His blood seeped through the wrappings on the hilt, wetting the diamond underneath.

It was warm.

The sword soaked the red into itself and ran it in long lines down the blade, forming an unrecognizable script he couldn't read. Then the lines changed, blood reforming into English; _Mogar is Ready_.

Michael pulled the sword closer to his face, squinting at the reading. He furrowed his eyebrows, swallowed, angled his head in every direction in hopes he would some answer to his situation, but the sun and the trees and the waves knew how to keep a secret.

“What the fuck?” he whispered. “What the _fuck_?”


	9. Jack: Warnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack gets a surprise visitor. Meanwhile, he tries to get information out of Geoff and Gavin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to catch up to all I've written thus far, so apologies if updates behind to slow from 2 days to about 3 or 4.
> 
> Also, fun fact: Last chapter --- Michael's chapter --- was actually supposed to be posted as the 3rd chapter (instead of Jack), but then I changed my mind and decided to tell the story in chronological order (as best as possible) and it ended up getting pushed to chapter 8. Editing!

_ Jack Pattillo, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
_ _ The Night After the Robbery _

Gavin, the poor kid who got caught up in the Havermeyer Robbery, had spent most of the day locked in his room, doing God knows what and talking to a friend of his on the phone. Thrice, Jack went up to his room to make sure he ate and took his eyes off the computer screen before he destroyed his vision. Each time, Gavin seemed less and less patient with him.

He made his rounds through all the dorms, cleaned the rooms that were vacant, lost in thought about the last few days. How he’d run out into the streets with barely a disguise and saved a man caught in the firefight. Jack wondered whatever happened to the paint-faced guy in the black and blue jacket, who he was, or how he got there.

But his imagination was cut short when he saw the fridge door open as he rounded into the kitchen. All his muscles tensed sevenfold, but released when an exhale of relief escaped his lips when he recognised the figure. “Geoff, you’re gonna give me a fucking heart attack.”

“Sorry,” he said but he didn’t sound sorry. Instead, he produced a piece of dark chocolate cake from the previous day. “But we have to talk, BeardO.”

“Stop calling me that,” Jack snapped, moving a platter of dirty dishes from the countertop to the sink. 

Geoff set down his cake plate and started to scour the cupboards for utensils. “I’m sure you heard about the robbery in North Havermeyer,” he said, shutting the third drawer. “Well, I mean, you went to the afterparty.”

“Keep your voice down,” Jack hissed. He opened a drawer and produced a fork, handing it to Geoff.

“Ah, thanks,” he said, quieter this time. “Anyway, I did a bit of snooping around. You know, ‘cause those two things that happened last night were certainly related.”

Jack leaned his elbow on the counter, gripping his wrist with his free hand. He crossed one ankle over another. “And? What did you find?”

“I found the stolen item inventory.” Flicking his wrist, the paper popped out of nowhere like a magician’s trick. He fluttered the paper in Jack’s direction and he took it.

Jack unfolded the paper. A list handwritten, only names and no other information. Elderfly Wings, Wiltingbane, the Black Segment, the Sword of Mogar. “None of these make sense,” he said. “This is no good. I don’t know what these things are.”

“Oh, but  _ I _ do,” Geoff chirped around a mouthful of cake. “There’s somethin’ funny going on, BeardO. I think I’ll need your help to figure it out.”

“My help?” Jack laughed. “I can give you a place to stay for the night but that’s all I can do.”

“Hey, you know that kid in room 104?” Geoff deflected, stabbing his fork into the sweet. “He was there when the robbery went down, right?”

Jack hid his bristling with a shrug. “Yeah, but I can already tell you who took everything. The Vagabond and his friend. That’s no secret.”

There was a brief moment where Geoff considered his fork, fiddled with his mustache, and then cast a tired look to Jack. “Not  _ everything _ ,” he said. “But that’s not the point I’m getting at. You ever ask if  _ he _ took anything from the centre?”

“Who? Gavin?” Jack stole a moment to think about the night Gavin came in through the front door, fiddling with a camera case that must’ve certainly had a camera in it. “Nothing but photos.”

“He didn’t come back with anything new?”

Jack just pursed his lips and shook his head, though he hadn’t seen what was inside the camera bag. Then, he inhaled sharply, his heart skipping a beat upon a realisation. “Actually, he didn’t come back with his tripod.”

The fork clinked loud against the plate, stabbed into the remaining slice of Geoff’s cake. Geoff bit his lips, gazing at the ceiling with immense curiousity. “Now, ain’t that something a little odd for a photographer to forget,” he said.

“That is,” Jack agreed. “But maybe it was lost in all the commotion.”

“So why hasn’t he gone back for it yet?”

Damn him, that mystical man, making him suspicious of a poor boy who just wanted to go home… A poor boy who was  _ waiting _ to go home, spending all of his time in his room. “He’s scared to go back,” Jack said as if a lightbulb had burst in his head. “But that’s what he’s gonna do. That’s why he’s not leaving for England ‘till tomorrow.” To himself, he added, “So why hasn’t he done it yet?” Geoff opened his mouth and the sound of bells came out. No, the bells came from the front of the inn. “Hold a sec.” Jack left the kitchen, opening his arms with his usual greeting. “Welcome to the Hunter’s Home! Can I get you anything?”

His blood became cold. Icy chunks tried to pass through his heart with aching avail. In the doorway, shadowed by post evening light, Michael Burns fiddled with an umbrella that wouldn’t close. He smiled when he noticed Jack and pushed his fogging glasses up his nose. “Evening,” he said. “I’m just looking for a friend.”

Jack’s eyes flickered behind Burns. No cars parked on the side of the road. “Which friend?” he asked.

“A young vlogger named Gavin Free. I was told he was staying here during his stay in the US.” Burns finally managed to get the umbrella shut, then he leaned against it like a cane. “He’s a British guy, maybe about yea high.” He gestured with his hand at eye level.

Jack scrambled for a moment, then said, “Actually, we don’t give out information on the clients who stay here.” He tried to quell the lie-tell quivers at the edge of his voice but the shakes just came out in a very weird hand gesture to the stairs.

“But you just asked me who I was looking for,” Burns countered, voice stern like an annoyed customer denied a refund. “I assumed you would help me.”

“Well, I can help you by saying no one here goes by that name.” This time, he clapped the inside of his fist against his hand. The longer Burns stared at him, the more Jack was beginning to see the holes in his own on-the-spot lie, so he added, “Anymore. He--- He left for England earlier this afternoon.”

Burns narrowed his eyes on Jack but whether it was the fury of not being featured on Gavin’s blog or something else, Jack couldn’t determine. “Well, that’s a damn shame,” Burns finally said.

“I agree,” Jack said. “But he didn’t even bother to ask for his deposit back.”

“He was in a hurry?” Burns asked.

Jack realised way too late he didn’t know enough information about what was going on in order to fabricate a lie that would get Burns away from Gavin. Geoff seemed to think Gavin stole something from the science centre. Maybe Burns was under the same impression. “He was… a little shaken about the event.” Jack wrung his hands together. “He was worried about the Vagabond and his friend. Being that close to a villain, I think it took about as much out of Gavin as he could take. He won’t leave his room.” A beat, then quickly, “Wouldn’t, until he left for England.”

Behind him, he could hear Geoff banging his head against the refrigerator door. He took that as a sign to shut the hell up.

There was a tense silence before Burns relented and lifted his umbrella again. “I guess that’s fair,” Burns said at last. It took all Jack had not to express his relief that he was leaving. “In that case, there’s nothing here for me.” He opened the door, the bells jingling jovial. Burns was halfway out the door, then he stopped and looked over his shoulder. “I just wanted to make sure he got back alright. If you do hear from him again, will you pass on my apologies for everything?”

“Of course,” Jack said, the first intentionally honest thing that came out of his mouth.

Burns nodded a thanks and then disappeared out in the rainy evening again. The bells announcing the closing of the door and Jack could feel all the tension falling out of his muscles.

“You dumb, stupid, dumb…” Geoff came out of the kitchen, grumbling to himself. Jack turned to meet his tired and now annoyed gaze. “How did you live your life on the run while being a shitty liar like that?”

“I usually had more time to think about it,” Jack replied coolly. “And I usually knew the whole situation. This time…” His eyes flickered up to the first floor then back to Geoff. “I don’t understand what’s going on but I intend to find out what.”

“So, what brought on this sudden change of heart, Pattillo?” Geoff asked. “Are you finally accepting your calling as a superhero?”

“No,” Jack snapped. “I’m doing this because I think someone could get hurt.”

“Gavin?”

“I don’t know,” Jack replied, chewing his lip. “For all I know, Gavin  _ did _ steal something from the science centre and it could be dangerous. And if he brings whatever it is all the way back to England…” He let it hang in the air, allowing implications to do his work for him. “It may not be intentional but the point is to keep anything bad from happening on Gavin’s part.”

“And Burns?”

“You said you knew what all the items on the list were. You wouldn’t be bringing them to me if they weren’t dangerous in some capacity.”

Geoff rocked forward on his toes, a smug smile gracing his features. “You’re quite the detective.”

“And if you’re so dedicated to getting me to help,” Jack continued. “Why not just explain the whole situation right now? You know more than you’re letting on.”

“Because, Jack,” Geoff said. “It has nothing to do with  _ what _ the items are, but who has them and where they went.”

“That’s why you're curious about Gavin,” Jack blurted out. The clock on the wall ticked three seconds. “That giant black cloud and the flashing lights. Do you know which invention that was?”

“No, but you did see the face of a man who does.”

Jack inhaled, long and deep. “Alright,” he said. “One thing at a time.”

***~ &&&~***

For the fourth time that day, Jack knocked on Gavin’s door. He heard an exasperated gasp, the dull thudding of socked steps all the way up; the door cracked open and half a face peered out the gap. “What’s up?” he asked, much less enthusiastic than he had been all day.

“I was hoping we could talk,” Jack said. He kept his head and voice low, coating his tone with concerned sympathy like too much honey on the last slice of bread. “May I come in?”

The eye went wide and he could hear Gavin swallow from the other side of the door. For half a second, he thought he would turn Jack away but instead, he opened the door all the way and stepped to the side. “It’s  _ your _ hotel, innit?”

Jack nodded in thanks and stepped inside the room. Gavin had barely gotten himself settled --- or he was already packed up to leave. The door locked shut behind him.

“What’s up?” Gavin asked again. He made no motion to go further into the apartment and Jack was stuck at the entrance door.

“Someone dropped by to see you,” he said.

Gavin swallowed again, letting his arms hang loosely at his sides. His weight was distributed evenly on both his legs. He looked less like a photographer and more like an anxious soldier trying to be at ease. As if he noticed Jack’s analytical gaze, Gavin rubbed his nose and shifted to one side. “Really?” he said evenly. “Who?”

“Michael Burns.”

His eyes went wide again, his face pale, his mouth half agape. Then, to hide his fear, Gavin blinked away emotion and walked further into the room. Jack trailed not far behind. “You want some tea or somethin’?” Gavin asked.

“I’m okay, thank you.”

Jack crossed to Gavin’s bed and sat at the edge of it while Gavin stalked over to the kitchen and filled a kettle full of water, setting it in its electric holder. “Is Burns downstairs?”

“No. I sent him away.”

Gavin looked over his shoulder quickly, an astonished frown that had no malicious emotions. “Oh. Cheers.”

“I told him you left for England this afternoon. He said he just wanted to know you were okay and if I were to see you, to tell you that he’s sorry about the robbery.”

Gavin hummed, nodding. He seemed to have no questions of his own although Jack was really hoping he would ask why. He turned around, leaned up against the counter, and then shrugged. “Alright.”

There was an awkward static in the air that apparently only Jack could feel. Gavin pursed his lips together, then kicked off the counter and started filtering through his suitcase to find a particular brand of tea. Jack licked his lips, inhaled, then asked, “Don’t you want to know why?”

Gavin looked up. “Why what?”

“Why I sent him away?”

After a careful moment of consideration, he shook his head. “No, not really.” And he went back to fishing around for his tea.

Jack was dumbfounded. He sat at the edge of the bed, staring down at Gavin with a stupid look on his face. His palms were upwards on his knees and Jack just could not blink the confusion out of his head. Giving up on the delicate approach, he decided to shoot for gold. “Why are you running from Burns? Did you take something from the museum?”

Gavin scoffed, a laugh. “No. Nothin’ to take,” he said.

“But you don’t deny running from Burns.”

Gavin shrugged one shoulder then made a triumphant noise when he finally pulled a box from his bag. He fished out a teabag, threw the box back onto the suitcase, and crossed to the kitchen cupboards to find a suitable mug. “Yeah, I guess,” he said.

“Why are you running from Burns?”

“Why’re you askin’?” Gavin set his mug on the counter and put the teabag in that. He turned against to lean on the counter, jaw set and gaze narrowed. “Why do you care?”

“Because I want to help.”

Gavin nodded like he was satisfied with that answer, but his tone said the opposite. “You can help by leavin’ me damn well alone.”

Jack flinched, then blurted out, “I think you’re in trouble.”

The moment was no less taut than old chewing gum stretched just before its snapping point and Jack could have cut it with the blunt end of a butter knife. Gavin’s cool demeanor was starting to crack, his eyes fluttering around the room in several directions before he adjusted his position and gripped the counter with his fingers. “How do you mean?”

“You know how I mean,” Jack said. “You’re afraid  _ and _ you’re hiding something. Something that has to do with Burns.”

“I didn’t bloody  _ take _ anything,” Gavin reiterated, irate. “Just some  _ buggerin’ _ videos. I  _ swear _ .” Behind him, the kettle was beginning to boil, low rumbles of thunder rolling in the plastic jug.

Jack rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands together. He tried that honey-slick sympathy again. “What happened at the science centre, Gavin?”

The kettle clicked. Gavin dropped his shoulders. He let go of his grip on the counter and folded his arms. “Nothing.”

Jack shut his eyes and sighed. For a moment, he worked the energy to get up, then stopped himself with a new question; “What kind of videos did you take?”

Gavin spun around and removed the kettle from the stand, pouring the hot water into a plain white mug with the Hunter’s Home star-like sigil on it. He set the kettle back down with a heavy click, picked up the mug, and leaned against the counter again. At least he wasn’t stupid enough to try and drink it immediately. “Good ones,” he answered. “Just videos of… of the exhibits.”

“And the robbery?”

“No, of course not.”

“You would pass up the chance to have something  _ that _ exciting on your channel?”

“Well, I was worried for my life, wha’nint I?”

“So when the lights shut off, you just shut the camera off, too?”

Gavin tensed his jaw. “Listen,  _ Jack _ ,” he began, setting his mug back on the counter. It clinked quietly. “It’s none of your  _ damn _ business what happened at the  _ damn _ science centre. You saw the news, right? I don’t know what you or Burns want from me, but I want no part of it. I’m going home.  _ That’s it _ .”

Jack relented. Finally, he stood from the bed. “That’s all I wanted to know,” he said. He crossed to the entrance door to let himself out --- then hung in the doorway an extra second. “If you ever want to talk about it, my door’s always open.”

He passed a look at Gavin over his shoulder but the man was staring at the floor, eyebrows pinched together and eyes concentrative. He didn’t respond, so Jack just shut the door and left him to be alone in his room again.

He trotted down the stairs back to the kitchen where Geoff was leaned back on a rest chair, feet kicked up onto a counter and half-asleep. “Hey, fucker, get your feet off my damn table.” He shoved Geoff’s feet off and Geoff woke with a start, casting his gaze around until it finally landed on Jack. “And before you say anything, yes, you were right. There’s something weird about Gavin.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. Actually, less than nothing.” Jack folded his arms and rubbed a knuckle against his beard. “He didn’t want to talk about it and he doesn’t seem to be interested in knowing what happened.”

“Lame,” Geoff said.

“I don’t think I could get him to care even if I knew everything that was going on.”

“More lame.” Geoff stretched his arms up and yawned. “Didja find out if he took anything?”

“Just videos,” Jack answered. “But there’s something about those videos.” After a moment, he sighed and dropped his shoulders. “But if he doesn’t want to tell me, then I guess we’ll never know.”

Geoff leaned his head back and groaned. “ _ Mega Lame _ .”

“Geoffrey, quit it.”

“Ultra  _ super _ lame.”

Jack sighed, then let the moment hang, letting the gears in his head turn, turn, until he remembered something. “About that list,” he said. “You said you knew what all the… the  _ things _ were.” A beat. Geoff lolled his head up to meet Jack’s gaze but he didn’t press. Jack sighed; all these people who couldn’t just answer him. “Well? What were they?”

“I believe they call it Science,” he answered. “But if my understanding of Science is correct, then that ain’t no Science I’ve ever seen.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Geoff smiled. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, radiating excitement in droves. “Call it a hunch,” he said. “But I think we’re about to find a lot more people who’re just like you.”


	10. Gavin: Vav, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gavin and Dan reach a horrifying conclusion that draws Gavin back to the science centre.

_ Gavin Free, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm _ _   
_ _ The Night After the Robbery _

“If you ever wanna talk about it, my door’s always open.”

After Jack left, Gavin slammed his tea down on the counter and fumbled with his phone with shaking hands. Of course, it only took a few rings for Dan to answer. “Hey, B.” His voice was slow, words slurred together like he had stuffed his mouth with cotton balls. Gavin’s heart leaped into his throat.

“You okay?”

“Mm-hm.” A beat, shuffling. “Was jus’ sleepin’. What’s up?”

“Burns came to see me. The hotel manager sent him off but he thinks I stole something.”

“Burns or the innkeeper?”

“Both, I think.”

Dan made a noise of indifference. “But you  _ didn’t _ steal anythin’, so why’re you so worked up for?” Gavin hesitated long enough and Dan’s voice sharpened with concern. “You did take something.”

“I didn’t!”

“You’re not a great liar, B.”

Gavin gestured, scrambling for words. “I don’t think I did. But… I…”

Dan scoffed a sleepy laugh. “You’re not sure?”

“I think they all know something I don’t,” Gavin said. “And, honestly, I don’t think I wanna know.”

Dan hummed and took a deep breath that sounded suspiciously like a snore. Before Gavin could accuse him of falling asleep, he said, “Well, hope it’s not somethin’ that’ll get you in trouble at the border.”

“What?”

“If you did take something and they find it on you, or whatever, while you’re tryin’a board the plane, they’ll be really ticked off. ‘Specially since that whole science centre thing is all over the bloody news.”

“It’s on the news there, too?”

“It’s a pretty huge deal. They’re talking terrorism and shit like that. All media flair, I think. Over, uh...” Dan took a deep breath and grumbled to himself as if he lost the word he was looking for. “Over exaggeratin’, I think, for the sake of, eh, media fear, I guess.”

“B, are you okay?”

“Peachy.”

“Alright.” Gavin grabbed his tea and shook the mug, watching the water circle around itself like a tiny hurricane. “What do you reckon I should do?”

“Up to you,” Dan said. “I mean, I’d just chance it at the border and hope for the best. Or, you could go back and snoop around but that’s not the best idea’r, I don’t think. At least it’d give you a chance to get your tripod back, though. Or you could hurry home since all that terrorism stuff is scary as hell. They’re expecting serious trouble in Achievement City.”

Gavin frowned. “I don’t think I want to know what’s going to happen,” he admitted. “I don’t even want to  _ care _ .”

“Yeah, figured as much.”

There was a long silence. Gavin fiddled with the teabag string, twining it between his fingers absently. Finally, “Do you think that, if I did take something and didn’t know it… And all this talk about terrorism and dangerous weapons and stuff…” He hesitated. “Do you think that… No, it’s stupid.”

“No judgment here. I’m the bloke who got sent home by friendly fire. Nothin’ll ever be as stupid as that.”

Gavin chuckled. “Right.” A beat, a deep inhale. “There’s no way I could end up hurtin’ someone with whatever I might have probably, but not intentionally, took?” No response. A few more ticking seconds from the clock on the wall. “Dan?”

“I’m thinkin'.”

Gavin gestured impatiently and stared up at the ceiling. “What’s there to think about? It’s a yes or no question.”

“I don’t know!” Dan snapped, frustrated. “I wasn’t there. It’s not like I know what all the damn exhibits were about. ‘Sides, you said all that happened was time freezin’, right? And you’re sure it only came from the machine and it’s damn unlikely you got anything from it, other than maybe radioactive---” Dan cut himself off in a horrified gasp.

Chills shot through Gavin’s chest, his stomach twisting into a thousand tiny knots. “What? What is it, Dan?”

“Bloody hell, Gavin!” he spat breathlessly. “You must’ve contracted something! My God, Gav, you’re  _ sick _ !”

“I’m not!”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“I don’t feel any different.”

“Well, yeah, it’s the incubation period, or whatever. Takes twenty-four hours to feel a cold, innit?”

“No!” Gavin pushed himself away from the countertop. His legs were pulling him around the room, pacing in large circles. Fear compelled him to run but there was nowhere to run to. “It can’t be. That’s damn impossible, Dan! That’s… It’s stupid!”

“Think about it, Gav! The whole time freeze thing could’ve been the first symptom, maybe a hallucination or somethin’. Maybe you haven’t noticed any others ‘cause you’re resting, or somethin’. But that’s  _ got _ to be it! Burns wants to find you before you spread it.”

“No,” Gavin repeated, the only word his panicked tongue could manage. “No, no, no, no, no. No! No! Hell no! I’m not--- I can’t be--- I never get sick! Ever!”

“Maybe you’re a carrier. You could infect other people.”

“Stop it!”

“But it’s a possibility.”

“Shut up!” Gavin ran a hand through his hair, rubbed his eyes, his mouth, his jaw. Dan was silent. They both were, for a while. “What do I do?”

“Go--- Go back,” Dan managed, his tone caught between exhaustion and panic. “You should. You should see if you can figure out what could be wrong. Gav, no one would be  _ this _ dedicated to finding you if you weren’t a threat.” A pained moment, as if Dan was fighting with himself to say the next bit; “At least make sure you’re healthy. And if you are sick, then get help.” A beat. Then, more strained, Dan added, “You could  _ die _ from this, B.”

Gavin’s heart sunk into his stomach. He covered his mouth, staring at the front door with horror etched into his eyebrows. After a nauseating moment, Gavin nodded. “Fine,” he said. Every part of his body was shaking. “I’ll go back. I’ll get my tripod. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Don’t get caught,” Dan said. “If you really  _ are _ sick... and if Burns is so dedicated to finding you...  _ and _ if you’re the only one who’s got it…” His voice trailed off, letting the conclusion hang in the air.

“He’ll kill me,” Gavin whispered. “Jack was right. I  _ am _ in trouble.”

***~ &&&~***

Waiting for nightfall was the hardest thing Gavin had ever done.

He preoccupied himself with computer games for the better part of it, but when the sun was setting and the street lights flickered on, Gavin couldn’t focus well enough on his games and losing repeatedly was getting on his nerves. He opted to shut down his computer for the night and sit at the edge of his bed, staring out the window and chewing on his nails.

He mentally checked his body, waiting for any sign of illness to clue in. His throat felt a bit sore. His body was aching from stress. He either had a sinus headache or eye strain. Or he was just making it up in his head and he wasn’t feeling any symptoms at all.

Finally, Gavin could see the moon peering between the buildings. The hour struck midnight. He wanted to wait until one or two, but he couldn’t handle it any longer. He slipped into the darkest clothes he had packed --- royal blue jeans and a dark grey sweater --- then slipped out of his apartment with a gentle click of the door.

His first problem would be getting by Jack.

Gavin parked himself at the top of the stairs, leaning forward and straining his ears for any sign of the innkeeper. The lobby was dark, lit only by tangerine lines of city lights along the wood floor. He stilled his hands by gripping the camera case at his hip. Nothing but his own heartbeat made his ears.

He descended the steps, the soles of his shoes mere taps of leather on wood. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped again, scanning the room for signs of life. Then, he peered around the corner into the kitchen. It was dark in there, too. For certain, Gavin determined, Jack must have been asleep.

He approached the door, fiddled with the lock, and pulled open the door. The bells betrayed him, announcing the moving of the door, and he froze. “Shh,” he whispered as if that would help. With the door partway open, a burst of cold wind weaseled in through the crack and Gavin shivered. He braved the wind and squeezed himself between the door and the wall and very gently shut the door behind him, making a mental note that the bells would rat him out on his way back in, too.

With the door shut (though still unlocked), Gavin jogged down the street out of view from the hotel.

The night was heartless and dry. The contrast of city lights and the blackened sky gave him a headache. For midnight, there were certainly a lot of people, though none that Gavin would desire association with. He kept his eyes forward and down, ignoring calls and whoops in the distance. He stuck to brightly lit main roads and as close to the centre of the sidewalk, walking against traffic rather than with it.

It didn’t take long to come to the science centre.

It was barred off by real ticker tape, Crime Scene signs and Do Not Trespass warnings, all lit in bright yellow and orange. Gavin squinted at the building. It felt different this time, like a static that stuck to dust and ash. The echo of gunpowder still lingered in the walls. A thousand prints of the same shoes paced around the ground, imprinted into the shards of bullet shrapnel and chunks of marble walls. His eyebrows furrowed together. He produced the camera from its case and he put the strap over his neck.

The flash of the camera cast brief shadows, illuminating up the stairs and in through the glass windows. Quickly, he cast a scanning gaze over his shoulder, caught no prying eyes, and swung a leg over the ticker tape. He hopped, stumbled when his back leg caught on the tape but steadied himself before he face-planted into the ground. He straightened, dusted off his shirt, and marched on inside as if nothing happened.

Inside, the science centre was torn to shreds. Glass littered the ground. Guiding rope and paperwork and empty bullet casing were thrown about carelessly, almost artistically. The glass barrier on the second floor had been shattered. The mascot head was abandoned by a trash can. 

Gavin stood in the centre of the front lobby. This was not how he left it. Cu-click. Another illumination temporarily deepened shadows, he caught the scene in the SD card. Gavin hummed, examining the preview. “Now, what happened here?” This time, Gavin’s phone didn’t scare him, the happy little jingle echoing off empty walls. He reached up and clicked a button on his earpiece. “Gavin Free.”

“Hey, B,” Dan chirped. “You in?”

“I’m in.”

“Find anything yet?”

“No. The whole place is absolutely mullered.” Gavin tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling. He pointed with his camera, pulled the trigger, and a flash of light revealed bullet holes in the ceiling. “It’s like a full-on war happened here,” he said. “But there were only two guys and I don’t reckon they went to the front here, so why’s it all chewed up like this?”

He stepped over a turned over pole and continued deeper into the centre. From memory, he recalled the twists and turns to the Immersion exhibit. “Maybe somethin’ else happened there,” Dan suggested. “Maybe the thieves were just media bait.”

“Maybe,” Gavin mumbled, snatching picture after picture. Nothing stood out, no exhibits were missing. Finally, he passed the gate to the Immersion wing, a wave of fearful familiarity washing over him. The psychic exhibit had been completely removed, replaced with something much less cooler that had to do with space. “I’m startin’ think my tripod is not here.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Everything’s all moved around.” Then Gavin stopped, a light bulb flickering like the camera flash. He turned to the space exhibit, pulled up his camera, and clicked. “That’s bloody weird. They haven’t even cleaned up the front lobby yet but they already replaced one of the exhibits.”

“Maybe they didn’t want to disturb the crime scene.”

“What they changed  _ was _ the crime scene.”

“Evidence, then!” Dan snapped. “I dunno, I’m just spitballing. I can’t see nothin’ and I ain’t a bloody detective.”

“Then shut up.”

“Why are we even talking, then?”

“‘Cause I don’t wanna be alone.” Gavin tore away from the space exhibit and made his way to the time machine. It hadn’t occurred to him that they should have replaced the time machine, too, and he felt undeserved relief when he saw it. The glass protecting it was still intact. “If Burns really does kill me, I want someone to know about it at least. No one’s really gonna notice if some English bloke disappears, innit?”

“ _ I’ll _ notice!”

“That’s the point I’m trying to make!” Gavin pushed the staff door to get the hall, startled by the blackness that shrouded the walls. He produced his phone and flicked on the light, illuminating the dark hall. He continued, then stopped at the door to the time machine. He jiggled the door but it didn’t open. “Dammit. Locked.”

“Guess you gotta kick it down.”

The hall wasn’t wide, but Gavin still backed up and threw his shoulder into the door. Instead of giving, the door just pushed back and threw Gavin off his feet into the wall behind him. He squealed as he flew and landed flat on his arse, opposite of the door. His phone skidded off somewhere, though remained lit.

Without prompting, Dan burst into laughter. “The hell was that!?” Gavin grumbled to himself, nothing coherent enough for Dan to hear. He stood, dusted off his pants, and scrunched up his face. “Try kicking the door by the handle, B.”

Gavin huffed, pulled on the hem of his shirt, then leaned back and kicked the space by the door handle with a resounding  _ bang _ . The door remained; Gavin flailed back, though he remained on his feet. One more, bang! Bang, bang!

Dan was cackling through the earpiece and Gavin pinched his lips together, wrinkling his nose, and folding his arms like a child denied a cookie. The door would not budge and every attempt just knocked Gavin backward and off-balance. “B, maybe it’s time for a different approach.”

“Reckon you’d get this open in one shot,” Gavin mumbled. “That’s why you’re laughin’ at me.”

“No, I’m laughin’ ‘cause you’re a weak bitch,” Dan snarked. “Go on, then, see if you can’t find somethin’ that’ll break the door down.”

“Rude,” Gavin scoffed but said no more. He walked deeper into the hallways, shining the light down halls as far as it would go. His brain made images where the light couldn’t reach but he swallowed his paranoia and continued on. “It’s like a damn horror movie in here.”

Dan didn’t say anything beyond an uninterested, “Mah.”

Then Gavin stopped. The skin on the back of his neck prickled and he couldn’t help the shock of a shiver that rattled his spine. “Dan,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I have a bad feeling.”

“Yeah, you just said you felt like you were in a horror movie.” Dan sighed. He tried to sound annoyed but Gavin could pick up anxiety on the edges of his voice. “C’mon, B, don’t get jumpy on me. My poor heart can’t take all this.”

“ _ Your _ poor heart?”

“Well, my poor lung, then. Hey, I’m in the one in hospital, trying to rest and you’re out and about, getting alien flu’s and such!”

“Oh,  _ excuse _ me---”

A hand landed on Gavin’s shoulder and he screamed, spinning on his heel and tangling his legs together. Gracelessly, he collapsed to the hard concrete ground. His phone flew out of his hand and landed somewhere behind him. Dan was yelping in his ear; “B! B, what happened? Are you okay!? Gavin!”

Gavin grappled with the camera in his hands, lifted it, and snapped a picture. The light flashed, glinted off the barrel of a gun, off the lenses of eyeglasses, obscured the eyes of Michael Burns. The light vanished, the darkness came again, and from the depths of panic, Gavin hid behind his camera and screamed, “ _ No _ !”

Bleakness. Darkness. Stillness threatened to be broken.

Nothing happened.

Dan pleaded for a response. Gavin lowered his arms, stared into the darkness, and took another photo. The same image again, however still and unmoving. Still, the barrel of the gun was trained on him; unmoving eyes glared him down.

Gavin stood. “Shush, Dan, I’m quite alright.” His voice shook so horribly, he sounded like a liar. He couldn’t feel his arms enough to brush the dirt off his clothes.

“The hell is wrong with you!?”

“Nothin’! There’s a…” Gavin stole a moment to breathe, snatching his phone off the ground and illuminating Burns with it. Sure enough, he was alive in flesh and blood, had his finger on the trigger, with all the intent to kill. “Burns is here. He’s got a gun.”

“What!? Get out of there!”

“He’s not moving.”

“What?”

“He’s…  _ frozen _ , Dan.”

Gavin’s cheeks prickled. Breathing became a labour. Not frozen. Slow-moving, like the night of the robbery, Burns was raising his head to where Gavin was standing now. He pulled the trigger where Gavin was laying before. Explosion, echoing and resounding but slow. Light, but stretched out over tens of seconds. Slow, slow,  _ slow _ . Gavin could barely make his legs work, stumbling around Burns and then struggling to make it to the door.

The shadows swirled around him like he was watching a ferris wheel spin out of control. A vignette encroached on his vision, the door at the end his only goal. Dan was talking, but Gavin couldn’t hear a thing he was saying.

“I have to find Jack,” Gavin gasped, reaching for the door. He pulled. Locked. Fear stabbed his back, through his heart, out his chest. He jiggled the door, desperately pulling and turning, slamming his shoulder against it, kicking just below the handle. “It’s locked!”

“B, did  _ you _ freeze Burns?”

“Free, that’s far enough.”

Gavin froze this time. Very slowly, he turned, flashlight in hand, to face the freely moving Burns and his still hot gun. He raised his hands. He refused to breathe. “Burns,” he began, every muscle vibrating like a dollar store toy. “What’s goin’ on?”

“If you come along quietly,” Burns said. “I promise, nothing bad will happen to you.” He took a step forward. Gavin tried to meld with the door. “You’re very, very sick. But we can help you. You just need to trust me.”

“Trust you!” Gavin squawked, every inch of his back against the door. “You’re pointing a bloody gun at me! You tried to  _ shoot _ me! How can I trust you?”

“I thought you were the Vagabond.”

Gavin barked a laugh of disbelief, gesturing to his entire body. “Do I look like the damn Vagabond to you?”

Burns lowered the gun and slipped it into a holster hidden beneath his lab coat. “I thought he was the one who inherited the… the  _ sickness _ from the time core.”

“Time core?” he breathed, something like a puzzle clicking itself into place. “You weren’t frozen… No, you were frozen in  _ time _ .” Cold air weaseled its way into his lungs, drawn in by a sudden realisation. “They all were.” He looked at his free hand, the left one, a horrible and stupid thought sticking to every nerve in his brain. Gavin looked up. “I’m not sick,” he said, praying to whoever could hear him that he was right. A sharp second, a dull minute. He found his breath again. “I’m  _ superpowered _ .”

“Superpowered,” Dan repeated, awestruck.

Burns narrowed his gaze. “Gavin, wait---”

He turned out his left hand, didn’t know what to look for, but when Burns went for his gun again, his heart jumped and that was the only sign Gavin had that it worked. On command, Burns stopped halfway drawing the pistol from his hip. “It worked.”

Dan’s voice cut through the shock: “Run.”

Gavin didn’t waste any time; he burst passed Burns and sprinted down the hall, twisting and turning at random bits, if only to lose both Burns and himself. Dan was silent. Every hall was dark and every door was locked and Gavin felt no less like a rat in a maze. It took ages to find a red exit sign, illuminating the end of a hall he turned down at random. He ran, ran until his legs turned to jelly and threatened to give out. His lungs burned, his eyes watered from squinting against the wind.

The exit door.

Gavin slammed into it with all the weight in his body and prayed to God it was unlocked. The door gave way and flung Gavin into the gravel. Dust kicked into the air, he rolled onto his back and skidded against the ground. He dug his elbow into the ground to stop himself, only to slice it open on a rock.

On its own accord, the door shut behind him.

Gavin groaned.

The dust settled around him, catching in his nose when he tried to breathe. He sputtered a cough, pressing a hand into the ground, blinking his eyes open as he leaned up. “What the hell…?” Dan was whispering to himself. “What the hell have you got yourself into?”

Gavin’s eyes rose on two figures; Jack, the innkeeper, and a familiar-looking man in a black and white suit. He was stunned into silence, looking between the two of them like his hand had been caught in the cookie jar. “What--- What’re you doin’ here?”

“The same thing you are,” said the man in the suit. “We’re looking for the truth.” He pursed his lips and waggled his head a bit. “Well, that and about twenty dangerous artifacts --- one, which you seem to have had the luck of, er... absorbing? Maybe?”

There was a long pause before Gavin threw his head back and looked at the sky. “You’re not coming home tomorrow, are you?” Dan asked and Gavin had the mental image of a puppy waiting at the front door with sorrowful eyes.

He drew a very big, very long, very angry sigh.

**End Part One**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that concludes part one? Is there a part one? Anyways, we're finally getting places!
> 
> So, I've pretty much posted everything I've written but the next ten chapters are all planned out and just waiting to be written. I may take a short break from posting just to get a little bit ahead. Hopefully, the next update shouldn't be any longer than a week. Meanwhile, I do have another story I've half-dedicated myself to but I'm waiting until I have more of that written before I post it. This story is a painfully slow-moving one (seriously, oh my God, this story is moving so much slower than I expected, but such is life) but things should be seriously kicking into gear in part two.


	11. Intermission: Million Dollar Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lindsay hunts the Million Dollar Man. Meanwhile, Fiona lands them a well-paying job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back!
> 
> Apologies for the long wait, but now we're ready to kick back into the story again. This chapter is an Intermission, which makes it nominally shorter than all the others, but the next chapter is not far behind.

_ Lindsay Tuggey, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
_ _ The Night After the Robbery _

Streetlights glinted off a cherry red sportscar as it whipped down the street, winding between cars and blowing stop signs. The engine screamed, tires spinning, she pushed the pedal as far as it would go. Her eyes flickered to the rearview mirror, saw nothing but rows of buildings shrink in the distance. She looked back to the road and it opened up for her. A yellow light. There, she saw the very moment she’d seen before.

_ A man with auburn hair, running, running to his car, a silver Audi. He would drive away from his pursuers. She would run a red light and hit him. The cars would slide, slide, stop. The man would fall out. He would get up, look over his shoulder, and she would see his face; Michael Jones, the man worth a million dollars. _

Lindsay grinned as the intersection came into view. She had faith in her vision, that he would be there when she burst through the light. Three, two---

A silver Audi crossed the intersection, she crossed, too---  _ Crash! _ \--- and the impact snapped her forward against the steering wheel, her forehead colliding with the leather. Black, red, a sort of faded white. Ringing, echoing, blurred sounds. It took all she had to bring herself to. She looked up, scanning for any sign of him. He got up, looked over his shoulder, she saw his face; Michael Jones, the man worth a million dollars.

He booked it across the street, pulled a man off his bike, and stole the two-wheeler, pedalling as hard as he could up towards the Cove. Lindsay seethed, revved the engine, sighing in great relief when the transmission sputtered, then turned. The car lurched forward and the chase was on again.

She followed him up the bridge, leaps and bounds faster than the bike. She caught up, rammed him with the hood, and when he fell back, the windshield fractured but didn’t break. She squinted, slammed on the breaks---

Airborne.

The engine spurred, four tons of metal and combustion nosediving to the ground. “Shit!” She lifted her arms, squeezed her eyes shut, the man went flying, the hood crumpled, flung her forward---

Nothing.

For a long time, nothing.

Very slowly, Lindsay lowered her arms and opened her eyes.

She was in someone else’s house. The walls were plastered with anime posters and boy band mercantile. She sat pn a cream-coloured, leather sofa across from a wall mounted TV. A half-wall to her left revealed a small kitchen. In the only window was hung the official flag of France.

Fiona’s apartment.

A half a beat, a realisation, and then she balled her fists and punched the couch on either side of her thighs. “Son of a bitch!” she yelled, pulling up and glaring at her hands because she had nothing else to be angry at. “Damn you! I was so close! I was so  _ close _ !” She fell back against the couch and rested her head back, groaning. “No. Dammit.”

From the door beside the TV, Fiona peered out, sucking on the straw of a juice box. She pursed her lips together, watching Lindsay, half-amused. “How’d it go?” she asked, a song-like tone.

Lindsay dropped her shoulders and pouted. “I had him,” she whined. “I hit him with my car.”

Fiona sputtered out juice and laughed. “Damn! Go Lindsay! What happened?”

“What do you think happened?” Lindsay snapped, then resigned because that was kind of rude. “My stupid…  _ thing _ happened. I hit him, we went over a bridge, and then I’m here.”

“Wildcard,” Fiona said.

“Wildcard,” Lindsay agreed, though with a streak of defeat to her voice. 

“I mean, you probably would have died, so it saved you, I guess.”

“It had to  _ teleport _ me all the way across town?” Lindsay sat up and threw her arms in the air. “C’mon! It could’ve done a bubble shield, or just healed me if I was that hurt, or--- Why did it bring me  _ here _ ?”

Fiona laughed again, skipping over to the couch and hopping down next to her. “Linds, trust me, superpowers --- as cool as they are --- never work the way you want them to.” To emphasize her point, she snapped her fingers and a jet fuel blue fire ignited between them, made by nothing but the blood in her veins. “Even if you have perfect control of them. And, from what I understand, you don’t get any control at all.”

Lindsay sighed and rested her hands on her knees, finally feeling tired. “Well,” she said. “Guess we’ll have to make money the old fashioned way.”

“Speaking of!” Fiona leapt forward and snatched the remote off the coffee table. She lifted it and turned on the TV, flicking over to the news. “That son of a bitch out did us  _ again _ !” The ticker tape at the bottom read  _ Vagabond Strikes Again: Havermeyer Science Centre _ . Smaller, below that:  _ 20 Scientific Artifacts Declared Missing; Thirteen Injured, Three Dead in Science Centre Shootout _ . “Look at this!”

“That fucker!”

“Right!?” Fiona jumped up to her feet. “Don’t worry, I got a huge payday coming up for us.” She shut off the TV and crossed the room. “An old contact of mine managed to pull through with some  _ serious _ intel on the Labs.”

Lindsay cocked an eyebrow. “The Labs?” she echoed, dubious. “And not the bank?”

“Well…” Fiona’s voice trailed off and she swung her arms around her idly. “It’s one of those overseas jobs,” she said. “The ones that send you off to get something particular and they pay handsomely for it.”

“Oh, God,” Lindsay put her head in her hands. “please don’t tell me we’re stealing for the Russians.”

Fiona planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes. “Really, Lindsay? What do you take me for? If I’m going to steal government plans and send them overseas, it’s going to France. Do you even know me?” She huffed and rolled her eyes to covert her joke. “No, it’s not like that.” She hesitated, then added, “It’s for a good cause.”

“Oh, a good cause?” Lindsay echoed, unable to fight a smile as she pried her palms from her eyes. “When did we graduate from bank robbers to vigilantes?”

“Just ‘cause we do a good thing  _ one _ time,” Fiona joked. “But seriously. What we’re about to do could change history as we know it. You know, for people like us.”

Lindsay mulled it over for a second, then said, “People like us as in bi or...?”

“No! Superpowered!” She laughed. “We could totally change the world. There’s this… group in Europe, who are like activists for superpowered people. They have histories and autobiographies, and they’re spreading the word that we  _ exist _ . We don’t have to be alone anymore!”

“But we aren’t alone. We have each other.”

“I mean, yeah, but…” Her smile kind of faded, she shrugged half-heartedly. “We didn’t always have each other, and there are people out there who don’t have  _ anyone _ .”

Lindsay chortled, a pleased breath escaping her lips. “You’re absolutely right.” She stood. “Alright, SuperNova, what’s the plan?”

Fiona smiled. “Well, the idea is to grab some files and kinda sorta  _ kidnap _ a guy named Michael Burns.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s fine! Probably. But  _ first _ ,” Fiona grinned, pulling a watch from her pocket, 24 karat gold and handsome. “we need some funding --- and  _ lots _ of it.”


	12. Jeremy: Killing Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeremy confronts Matt about the Vagabond. Then, he finally gets to test the Killing Machine. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned...

**Part Two: Mogar vs the Vagabond**

* * *

_ Jeremy Dooley, Six Weeks Before the Cataclysm  
_ _ The Day After the Robbery _

About seven clicks after Jeremy knocked, Matt finally opened the door to his apartment. He was swaying, barely awake, squinting. His hair was down and frazzled and sloppy with the rest of him. “The fuck, Jeremy? What happened? Is that blood?”

Jeremy pushed past Matt, located his cell phone on the coffee table, and went for it. Matt grumbled and locked the door again. While his back was turned, Jeremy scanned the floor for the letter. “Where is it, Matt?”

“What?”

“The note from the Vagabond.”

Matt rubbed his eye and frowned. “I didn’t get a note from the Vagabond.”

“You did,” Jeremy snapped, dropping to the floor and peering under furniture. “You did. I chased that fucker to Dig Town and wrecked my bike trying to catch him.” He huffed, pushing up into a kneel, narrowing his eyes on Matt. “Dammit, Matt, are you in with the Vagabond?”

“No! Of course not.”

Jeremy pressed his cheek against the floor again. “Then your Marked.”

“I’m what?”

“ _ Marked _ .”

Matt gestured with his hands, though the meaning of it was lost with hangover sloppiness. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means he’s going to kill you.” Jeremy stood. “He slipped the letter under the door then took off. It’s a  _ warning _ , Matt.”

Matt didn’t say anything; he crossed to his desk, picked up a piece of paper, and shook it. “Are you talking about  _ this _ note? Right here?” Jeremy didn’t ask; he leapt for the paper and ripped it from his hands, pushing it up to face to read.

_ Dear Mr. Axial, _

_ Your requested items have been left at a drop off point. Please meet with us at the East Hoboken Conservation Centre to claim your items. Bring the agreed payment to complete the transaction. We appreciate doing business with you and look forward to working with you in future endeavours. _

_ S & Co. _

“That’s not a V,” Jeremy mumbled stupidly. “This isn’t the Vagabond’s note. Where’s the envelope? It had all his…  _ things _ on it.”

Matt drew a deep sigh. “Okay, the note came in a Vagabond package, yes, probably because he’s the one who delivered it.”

“No!” Jeremy threw the note back at Matt. “I’m  _ your _ delivery boy!”

“Yes, you are, dumbass,” Matt sighed, resigned. The paper hit him in the face and fluttered to the ground. “and the Vagabond is S & Co’s.” He rubbed his face; Jeremy’s cheeks were turning pink. “God, Jeremy. Please relax.”

He stammered, struggling for something to say, but nothing came out except a frustrated sigh. Defeated, Jeremy plopped on the vinyl sofa. “I’m an idiot,” he muttered, running a hand over his head. There was half a beat before he said, “Just, please don’t do any dealings with the Vagabond, ‘kay?”

“I’m not stupid.”

Jeremy sat for a while, then leaned his elbows onto his knees and sighed. “Sorry.”

Matt frowned. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back out with a red solo cup. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you genuinely freaked out, Jeremy.” He handed the cup over and, upon further inspection, Jeremy determined that was vodka in there, not water. He took a good swig of it then set it back down. His stomach turned.

“The hangover,” he lied.

Matt didn’t seem convinced but he didn’t press and Jeremy was thankful for that. “Eh. I’m sure the Vagabond could’ve used a good scare,” he said and that brought a chuckle out of Jeremy. “But, back to business, I got to go pick up my shit tonight. You go out, test the pistol, and come back tomorrow night. If this haul goes exactly as I hoped, I’ll have something for you by the time you get back.”

Jeremy nodded. “Sounds exciting.” He downed the rest of the vodka but barely felt it. “I’m gonna take my bike to the garage and then shoot some fuckers, maybe.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Dunno. Patrol town and see if I can find anything worth shooting at?”

Matt laughed. “Sure.”

Jeremy stood and waddled back to the door, face still hot with embarrassment. Maybe Matt noticed, because he said, “Hey.” Jeremy turned. “Try not to worry about me too much, okay? I can take care of myself.”

Jeremy, despite himself, laughed. “Oh. Well, yeah.” He patted his chest where the gun rested. “But you don’t got onn’a these babies.”

“We don’t even know if it works.”

“We will!” Jeremy stabbed a finger into the air, backing out of the apartment. “I assure you, we will.”

***~ &&&~***

Jeremy took an Uber back to his ruined motorcycle, then called his mechanic to pick it up. The whole process took hours and the sun had long since set by the time Jeremy was on the road again.

The bike had taken a beating; one long, white scratch ran all along the side and the back half of the left side underglow was broken. He only paid enough to get it back on the road and opted to patch up the rest of it another time.

Currently, he parked in an alley, sitting on his more or less fixed bike, chewing away at a Subways sandwich and watching the world go by. An ambulance rushed by towards the hospital, accompanied by a police car. A drunk couple shared messy kisses. A man huddled into himself, talking to himself, muttering something about a lost jacket.

Jeremy took a sip of his soda.

He reached down and flicked on the radio, bass pumping through the speakers like syrup that had been left on a plate overnight; slow and sticky and sweet. He folded up the remainder of his sandwich and slipped it into the bag on the left side rear of the bike, then cracked his knuckles and leaned on the handle.

And then a police car whipped by, sirens on full blast, startled the hell out of Jeremy. He snapped his head up, barely caught a glimpse of where the car was going, but a kick and a pull breathed life into the engine and he burned out racing after the vehicle.

The police were speeding, blowing through red lights and barely slowing to turn. Jeremy tailed, pushing his bike, wind burning his cheeks and his head.

Finally, they came upon a jewelry store. Several police cars circled around the front with officers standing beside them with guns in hand. Shattered glass and bullet casings littered the road. “Thieves?”

What made this robbery particular was the blue fire burning in a perfect semi-circle around the front of the store. The flames were smokeless but hot. No fuel, no trail, nothing by the lick of flame and heat. It separated the building from the police cars. The officers were standing around stupidly and the firemen were equally as lost, hands rubbing helmets and hats. It seemed the one or two workers at the store were standing outside.

Jeremy slowed, scrambling for an ounce of logic to make sense of the situation. Regardless, if it was fire and thieves that were the problem, perhaps he and his yet-to-stress-test killing machine could be the solution.

The motorcycle slowed to a stop beside the cars and an officer acknowledged him. "No civilians," he spat, though he was breathless with fear. He was short, had a round, young face. It felt like he was being scolded by a child.

"Not a civilian," Jeremy lied. "Name's, uh, Rimmy Tim. Part of a special forces team designated for this kind of work."

"This… kind of work," he repeated. The officer's eyebrows pinched upwards and he turned to look over his shoulder. "Luna. We got…" His voice trailed off, at a loss for appropriate words. He just nodded his head towards Jeremy.

“Fuckin’ Vagabond and now this,” he muttered, dropping his head to one side, locking eyes with the new arrival.

Jeremy rubbed his fingernails on his jacket. “May I?”

The constable, messy hair and tired eyes, sighed long and defeated. "Fuck it," said Luna. "We got nothing else to try."

Jeremy set on his hat, donned his glasses, and drew his pistol. "Then let’s do this."

The first course of action was to get past the wall of fire. Bright blue and hot, Jeremy scanned the wall for some kind of opening. Between the flames, two shadowy figures with bags in hands gathered items off counters and out of glass cases. He raised the pistol and trained it on one of the figures.

He fired.

A white, nebulous bubble the size of his palm shot across the air and everyone, including Jeremy, recoiled. The gun kicked back. It didn’t bang like a bullet but echoed like feedback on a radio, warped as if it were underwater and far, far away. It still shot like a bullet, if only a fraction slower.

One of the figures barely reacted; the other whipped around and snapped her fingers. The bubble burst into a shower of cerulean sparks. The wall of fire was blown out by an invisible wind and colour faded in.

Two women stood in the middle of the store, half-turned and curious of what just happened. The first one, whom Jeremy assumed was behind the blue fire, wore a purple and white body suit carved with dying stars and galaxies. She had a giant Superman-inspired insignia on her chest. A mascarade cyan mask covered her eyes.

The other woman was dressed in white bodysuit dotted with black and red playing card suits, hair tied into twin braided pigtails, her face painted with heart over her eye and a scarf-like mask across her mouth with a black spade sown on the right side. At her hips, a small cape made of an inverted colour folded in the wind.

If they had been wet with ink, Jeremy determined, he could have assumed they walked right out of a comic book.

He jumped once on the spot then charged into the jewelry store. Constable Luna withdrew his gun but waited and the rest of the police force hesitated with him.

“Hey!” Jeremy snapped, though he realised now he already had their attention and that was completely unnecessary. “Drop the bags and surrender. No one has to get hurt.”

“How about  _ you _ drop the gun and surrender to  _ us _ ?” countered the blue fire woman, planting a hand on her hip. “Seriously, what the hell is that thing?”

Jeremy opened his mouth, then shut it, and tried not to shrug. “It’ll be the last thing you ever see if you don’t turn yourselves in.”

“Oh, I’m  _ so _ scared,” she laughed, tossing an amused look to her friend. “What’re you gonna do? Get soap in my eyes?”

The woman in card suits snorted, absent-mindedly throwing more watches into her bag. “Don’t mean to  _ burst your bubble _ ,” she added, earning a groan from both Jeremy and her friend. “But trust us when we say you are not gonna win this fight.”

“Listen,” Jeremy began, inclining his hand and taking one hand off the gun to open his palm. “Trust  _ me _ when I say I have no idea what this thing does and, so far, I’m just as surprised by bubble bullets as you are.” He shook his head. “There’s no need to find out what it does when it actually hits someone.”

“It’s a  _ gun _ ,” the fire woman snapped. “It’s gonna kill us. It’s not that big of a surprise. Now, can you get the hell out of here before I burn your stupid fucking clothes? You’re an actual fashion disaster and it hurts more than whatever that stupid gun could do. Seriously, who pairs orange with purple?”

“Hey,” Jeremy whined, dropping his shoulders. “Are you the fashion police or are you robbers?”

“Vigilantes, actually,” the card woman corrected with a pointed finger. “And for the record, when the papers ask, we’re Wildcard and SuperNova.”

“Uh huh,” SuperNova said. “All those damn mundanes are going to have their world turned upside down when they find out  _ superheroes _ really do exist.”

Jeremy hesitated, casting a look between the two of them. “Superheroes  _ don’t _ exist,” he said. “So, not only are you guys evil, you’re batshit crazy, too.” Wildcard and SuperNova exchanged tired looks and then looked back to him with exaggerated disappointment. They shrugged and turned back to their work. Somehow, that stung more than their banter. “H-Hey, don’t ignore me! I’m right here!”

“Uh huh.”

“Yep.”

SuperNova didn’t look over her shoulder; she snapped her fingers. It took half a second of smoldering for Jeremy to smell the smoke. He reached up to his hat, felt the heat, and yelped. He ripped it from his head and threw it onto the floor, stomping out the fire she’d lit on his hat. He pursed his lips and looked back at the police; Constable Luna’s hand was over his eyes, shaking his head.

Jeremy slouched, hurt, then turned and raised his pistol again. “That’s it. I no longer feel bad about this.” He trained it on Wildcard and pulled the trigger.

Wildcard didn’t turn to acknowledge it but she disappeared all the same. The bubble “warbled” (for lack of a more scientific term) and collided with the wall beyond where she used to be.

The bubble popped but left no residue. The wall turned the colour of rust, then black, and it imploded on itself, crumbling away and fading into particles like dust. Jeremy lowered the gun. “What the actual fuck?” he whispered.

Wildcard reappeared two inches to the left,  _ slowly _ looking up to examine the damage done and  _ slowly _ turning back to Jeremy with an astonished stare.

“What the  _ hell _ did you just try to do to her!?” SuperNova yelled, gesturing to the wall. “Are you  _ fucking _ kidding me!?”

Jeremy’s pinched his lips together and nodded. “Not for use on humans. Got it.”

“The hell is wrong with you?”

“You just tried to burn me to death three seconds ago!”

“I only set your hat on fire!”

“Only!?”

“Hey, uh,” Wildcard pursed her lips and gestured for SuperNova to follow. “Maybe we should, you know, get the fuck outta here?”

“No way!” she snapped, stepping towards him. “This fucker is dead meat!”

Wildcard didn’t really nod or shake her head, kind of caught somewhere in the middle. “Alright. We kill the guy  _ then _ fuck off.”

Jeremy jumped and readied himself, raising the pistol and firing off. SuperNova snapped her fingers and Jeremy leapt to the side, cursing when the place he once stood was now on fire.

He ducked behind a counter. One, two sharp breaths, he peeked up over the counter and fired several shots in a row, sweeping across the room. The gears whirred and the plastic grip warmed, the barrel alighting a bright red. The bubble bullets struck the ceiling, the floor, another counter; each item crumbled into ash.

Wildcard threw aside her bag and stormed towards Jeremy. He panicked, repeatedly firing off, but each bubble bullet was deflected or otherwise rendered useless by an array of unseen forces; an invisible shield, a burst of electricity, a conjured mirror that sent the bubble right back at him. Jeremy gasped and hit the deck, the bubble shooting over his head and striking a coat hanger.

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” he chanted, his heart slamming against his chest. He pressed a palm against the ground and stood --- but Wildcard had already crossed the distance and was in the middle of a swinging fist. He batted it away with the back of his arm. She flung another fist and nailed him right in the jaw, knocking him off balance and he stumbled backwards.

He gathered his footing and charged, slamming his shoulder into her stomach and throwing them both forward towards the front desk. They hit the ground. Jeremy pushed up off her and she kicked him in the collarbone, sending him flying backwards. She got to her feet before him and picked him up by the collar of his jacket ---  _ picked him up! _ \--- and flung him against the counter.

He barely heard SuperNova snap her fingers over the screeching of the counter.

Jeremy panicked and rolled over the counter with a push of his hand against the table, but it lit aflame under his palm and he crashed to the floor on the other side, clutching at his injured hand. “Son of a bi---” Snap, he pushed off the ground--- Snap, Jeremy fired off at the source of fire. SuperNova snapped the bubble again, but he could pull the trigger faster than she could set fire. She jumped to the side and hid behind a glass cabinet.

Wildcard on one side, SuperNova on the other, Jeremy scrambled to his feet --- then, a light bulb lit so bright, it blew up in his head and gave him a resounding headache. He hit the deck for no discernible reason and fired at Wildcard and didn’t stop. She closed in on him but every bubble popped --- shot by electricity, poked by a conjured dagger that clamoured to the ground, colliding with a bizarre shield --- and his heart leapt into his throat --- until he saw it again, that mirror. The bullet hit the mirror and it reflected up towards the ceiling. He turned and fired at SuperNova. She snapped her fingers, the bubble popped, Wildcard grabbed him by the shoulders---

The reflected bullet hit the ceiling above SuperNova and it crumbled. Whatever it had been holding (a filing cabinet, a desk chair) collapsed onto her. She yelped, ducked, and Wildcard screamed; “Oh, my God! No!” And SuperNova disappeared under the debris.

Jeremy spun himself on the ground, kicking out a leg, and sweeping Wildcard off her feet. She hit the ground with a resounding thunk. He shoved the gun barrel against the ground and fired. The floor crumbled and she fell through the hole with a surprised cry. He rolled away before he fell with her.

Silence.

Jeremy took a big breath, pushing himself to his feet with an exhausted sigh. “Get fucked,” he quipped. He turned to where SuperNova had once been and he jabbed a finger towards the space. “That’s for burning my favourite hat.”

He stood in the wreckage of the jewelry store for a moment, then wandered over to the bags and opened it to peer inside. Sure enough, stolen goods glinted in the blue light. He shut it close and turned back to the officers. “Alright! It’s over---” Shifting, something fell to the side behind the counter where SuperNova had been. Jeremy threw his head back and sighed loudly. “Come the fuck on.”

SuperNova stood, a notable bruise marring her left cheek, blood dripping down her chin. She didn’t say anything, just seethed in the fire of her own anger. Jeremy drew the pistol but she was faster; she roared, throwing out an arm, and a cone of blue-white fire shot out of her hand, hot and burning.

The jewelry store light aflame like a bomb had gone off. This time, the fire genuinely burned, crackling and dangerous and smokey. When the white subsided, the fire was now orange and red, smoking, thriving on anything that could burn, including Jeremy’s clothes.

Jeremy screamed, ripping off his jacket, patting at his pants, everything was so fucking hot--- he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t--- The fire snuffed out, ash stuck to his skin, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.

The second he was certain all the fire had gone out, he whipped around, aching and burning and gasping.

SuperNova pulled Wildcard out of the hole, no better for wear than Jeremy. Whatever she had just done was as much a toll on her as on him. She wasn’t burned, but she was gasping, stiff, wincing.

They looked at him and he stood, shaking, shallow breathing making his chest pulse. His lungs ached, his throat burned, everything hurt. His left arm was caked in burns, blisters, and blood, but he could barely feel a damn thing. The pistol laid burning hot metal on the ground. The store burned and firemen stepped in with water. The police yelled.

His voice was barely a whisper over the roaring flames: “What the hell are you?”

Whatever rage fueled them vanished. SuperNova gasped like she was going to cry, pressing a knuckle against her lips. Then, she steeled her expression, flipped him off with one hand, and grabbed Wildcard’s hand with the other.

She pulled and Wildcard limped after her, pulling her close and letting her lean against her as they started for the back door. She bothered to stop and grab one of the bags, hauling it over her one shoulder while she supported SuperNova with the other. “Don’t blame him,” she said. “He doesn’t know any better.”

Together, they limped out the back door and the door exploded into blue flame. The orange fire stayed.

Jeremy took a deep breath through his nose, exhaling with a drop of his shoulders, surrendering to the distinct feeling that those two were going to get away. Behind him, the officers yelled, Constable Luna ordering them to follow around the back and search for them.

Backlit by the blue fire, he grabbed his smoldering hat off the ground, planted it on his head, and staggered out the jewelry store with a profound sense of a world-shattered change --- and in a lot of pain.

***~ &&&~***

Matt opened the door, opened his mouth to greet him, then cut himself off with an, “Oh, my God, Jeremy, what the fuck happened to you?”

Jeremy swallowed and rubbed at the ash on his face, smearing it across his cheek. He gestured to the pistol in his shoulder holster. “Tested the gun,” he said. “You’re never gonna believe this.”


End file.
